Indonesia

The Ministry of National Education and Culture (MOEC) is the organizational structure of the Indonesian educational system. It consists of seven principal units at the central level. These seven units are the Secretariat General, Office of Educational and Cultural Research and Development, Inspectorate General, Directorate General of Basic and Secondary Education, Directorate General of Higher Education, Directorate General of Out-of-School Education and Youth and Sports, and the Directorate General of Culture.

These positions assist the Minister of National Education in setting forth an administrative structure of education, developing curriculum, financing education, establishing the infrastructure and providing for equipment necessary for carrying out educational activities, and training faculty and staff to serve the education system.

At the local level, the Ministry of Education and Culture is represented by an Office of Education and Culture in each of the 27 provinces, and by a district office in each of Indonesia's 305 districts. The major task of the provincial and district offices is to interpret and implement ministerial policies on education and culture with recognition given to distinctive features of the local area.

The Ministry of Religious Affairs is responsible for the Islamic preschools, primary schools, junior secondary schools, and senior secondary schools. Provision of higher education is managed by the Ministry of National Education and Culture through the directorate general of higher education, as well as by the Military Academy and the College for Civil Servants.

Finance: Technically, the government is responsible for financing education. However, costs for education carried out by the community is recognized as the responsibility of those institutions. In some cases the government funding is limited to specific elements of compulsory education. The education programs funded by the government are mainly financed through the administration's annual budget along with a separate development budget. Other funding sources are international aid (loans and grants) and assistance from regional governments and the private sector.

Primary school is free and theoretically requires no fees. Routine assistance for financing the middle and higher levels of education is the responsibility of the family in the form of a school fee paid to the state by each school to be reallocated back to the schools through an account known as the Education Funds Support. While the government offers subsidies to universities and among the various regions, it strongly encourages the participation of the local government, community and business in educational finance. Essentially each educational institution is expected to manage its own admission process and finances.

The Ministry of Education budget has expanded continuously over time. Within the first five-year development planning period or Repelita (1969-1973) the budget was 147 billion rupiah. There was a marked increase in monies appropriated in 1973 in support of the presidential decree launching the compulsory six years of primary school education. The budget increased to 12.9 trillion rupiah during the Fifth Repelita (1989-1993), and financial allocations for the first year of the Sixth Repelita (1994-1999) expanded to 4.6 trillion rupiah. The annual percentage of MOEC budget fluctuates in close proximity to the gross domestic product (GDP).

During the Fifth Repelita, 83.5 percent of the routine budget of the MOEC was designated for salaries and employee related expenditures. This concentration of the routine budget on employee-related expenditure resulted in limited availability of funds for procurement of teaching supplies, educational facility development, and administrative activities. Most consistently noted in allocations is the preeminence given by the Indonesian government in making of good citizens through the teaching of Pancasila. For example, in the school year 1997-1998, approximately 1.3 percent of the budget was allocated toward the development of "Followers to Believe in God" whereas the government allocated 2 percent of the total allocations toward producing more professional educators.

Also during the Fifth Repelita, international loan assistance amounted to 51 percent of the total development budget. Loans from the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) amounted to US$457 million, and loans from the Asian Development Bank totaled more than US$507 million. The World Bank provided assistance to Indonesia during 1970-1995 for developing education in the amount of US$1.54 billion. The total amount of Asian Development Bank loans during the period 1975-1995 was US$1.39 billion.

Educational Research: The key to quality postgraduate education is in focusing on research conducted by the university. Regular and continuous funding for research has only been available within this decade. With this funding availability has come greater opportunity to solve education development problems such as enhanced capacity for lecturers of various science and math subjects. Further, university research is rendering technology innovations having commercial and copyright potential in such fields as agriculture, tropical rain forests, biotechnology, and computer software programs. Increased research capacity might allow for academicians to travel outside their campus, helping to develop small and struggling industrial business enterprises, and in identifying and solving problems at regional and local levels.