Empowering Communities in Remote Areas: Improving Basic Education Services

31 May 2018

Monthly Evaluation Meeting Between User Committee and Teachers in one of KIAT Guru
Pilot Elementary School in East Manggarai District, East Nusa Tenggara. (TNP2K)

Slide.

The Government of Indonesia (GoI) recognizes the importance of education in reducing poverty and inequality and allocates a substantial amount of resources to increase education access and quality. Since 2009, 20 percent of national and district government budgets have been allocated to education. Money spent on teachers’ welfare has increased significantly. However, improved teacher welfare has not led to better learning outcomes, and teacher absenteeism in rural and remote areas remains high.

To address these constraints, the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction under the Secretariat of the Vice President of Indonesia Office (TNP2K) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Culture initiated Kinerja dan Akuntabilitas Guru (KIAT Guru). The KIAT Guru pilot empowers communities to oversee teacher presence or performance, and works with local governments to link payment of APBN-based special allowances for teachers with their presence or service quality. The pilot aims to improve education service delivery in remote areas by enabling both teachers and community members to develop a service agreement which is evaluated on a monthly basis. In some pilot schools, community verification of teacher presence and community evaluation of teacher service performance are tied with the amount of special allowance teachers receive.

The Brown Bag Lunch which is held on Thursday May 31, 2018 answered three main questions:
       1.    How can communities be empowered to provide support for and monitor education service delivery?
       2.    How effective is this in improving education service delivery indicators?
       3.    How does KIAT Guru attempt to sustain its community empowerment mechanism?

Initial findings suggest that appropriate awareness, capacity building, monitoring instruments and legal support can empower communities to hold teachers accountable. This mechanism however requires some prerequisites on the capacity of community facilitators and community members themselves, as well as the commitment of stakeholders from village-to-national level to commit legal as well as financial resources.