City Report and Action Plan

Surabaya

Mr. Arthur Pinontoan
Director of Education Department, Education Department
Surabaya City Government
Indonesia

CITY REPORT

Education System

The education department of Surabaya comes under the offices of the Mayor and Vice-Mayor. Surabaya is the capital city of East Java Province and is the second largest city in Indonesia. It is divided into four regions, each of which is administered by one mayor and vice-mayor. The Department of Education comes under the Ministry of Education and the Government of Surabaya City.

Each department is administered by the Head of the Department for that region. Department heads are appointed by the mayor and are responsible to the mayor. The department is responsible to conduct educational services, including primary education, secondary education and vocational education, to all school children aged 7 - 18. The department is to provide basic knowledge and life skills before the children move on to higher education.

Current States and Challenges

In Surabaya, some children experience happiness, joy and laughter while others have to work due to poverty. Many children drop out of school as well. The most pressing problem of Surabaya is poverty.

These days, education has become a major concern. Most poor children cannot attend school due to poverty, insufficient access to better quality education and lack of nutrition. The Government (Department of Education), in association with AUICK is developing a program called "Universalization of Primary Education for the Urban Poor" in the hope that poor children will soon get equal quality education to those from middle-class and higher-class communities.

The vision of Surabaya is to create better quality education, which is global and affordable to society. The motto of Surabaya is "Education doesn't only belong to the Government, but also to society."

The goals of the Surabaya Department of Education include:

• To work towards extended and expanded educational access in order to attain reasonable and affordable education based on people's needs.
• To improve the quality and relevance of education
• To improve the quality of human resources
• To improve the educational output according to the schools current and valid passing standard
• To construct global education based on the globalization era
• To increase people's participation in the educational process

To build good educational support facilities to optimize external education (education outside of schools)

ACTION PLAN

Objectives

To make 100 percent of school-aged children attend school and to create better-quality education, which is global and affordable to society

Target Group

• School children aged 6 to 15 to complete the 9-year primary education
• Illiterate people and drop-out children to attend special school
• School children aged 6 to 15 from low-income families and slum areas, to complete the 9-year primary education

Target Action

• To increase the Gross and the Net Participation Number, especially for school children from low-income families and slum areas
• To provide free-schooling for school children from low-income families and slum areas
• To add more school teachers
• To improve curriculum

Target Action

• To improve the quality and professionalism of school teachers and educational personnel
• To improve and extend educational facilities, including teaching-and-learning materials and public libraries
• To increase the achievement of poor school children, inside and outside of school

Ways to Reach the Target

• For Parents:
  1. To encourage their children to go to school
  2. To advise their children that schooling is more important than employment
  3. To give the right nutrition and immunization during their growth
• For Department of Education of Surabaya City:
  1. To establish a new regulation that school children aged 6-15 are obliged to attend the 9-year primary education
  2. To list all school children from low-income families and slum areas in order to provide free-schooling
  3. To increase the number of available teachers graduating from teacher's colleges
  4. To send school teachers for professional teacher's training regularly, in order to update their teaching techniques and to improve their competence and professionalism as an educator
  5. To conduct a series of researches on the current curriculum in order to implement the best curriculum demanded by the government and society
  6. To propose a new primary education budget allocation to the local government with the aim of providing more school facilities
  7. To add more public library units in the city with the aim of increasing the interest in reading books
  8. To monitor and evaluate the outcome of each student in every term and to send its report eventually to their parents
  9. To give special award to poor students who perform good achievement inside and outside of school
  10. To give extra-class for students who feel incapable of learning new things/lessons in class
• For School Committee and Educational Institutions
  1. To socialize the 9-year primary education programme among poor inhabitants, especially in slum areas
  2. To foster poor parents to support their children to go to school
  3. To socialize the 9-year primary education programme through mass and electronic media
• For the City Government:
  1. To increase city funds for education to 20 percent
  2. To associate with foreign and international institutions in order to improve the quality of education
  3. To socialize the 9-year primary education through mass and electronic media