Education Red Report Card

Truly worrying. Over the last several years there have been very dangerous signs for the future of the country\'s civilization, namely conflicting tendencies in the management of national education.

KOMPAS/ABDULLAH FIKRI ASHRI

The principal of SD Paoman IV state elementary school, Lutfiya (third left) and her students read books about mangroves at their school in Indramayu regency, West Java, Saturday (25/5/2019). SD Paoman IV is one of the 26 elementary schools in Indramayu running the environmental education course on mangroves. The target is that 42 elementary schools apply the course this year.

First is the paradox of the tendency for an increasingly large education budget on the one hand and the declining quality of our education on the other hand. For example, in the 2018 state budget, the education budget allocation reached Rp 444 trillion and in 2020 this figure increased to Rp 508 trillion. On the other hand, Indonesia\'s PISA ranking dropped from 65th place (2015) to 72th (2018) among 77 countries because the Indonesian children\'s reading, math and science ability scores continued to decline.

The World Bank reported that the quality of education in Indonesia was still the lowest in the scope of ASEAN. Fifty-five percent of children aged 15 years were functionally illiterate, compared to Vietnam, which is less than 10 percent (CNN, 7/6/2018). Based on the global league table published by the education firm Pearson (2012), Indonesia\'s education system is rated the worst in the world, and the best are Finland and South Korea.