Education in Focus as Hatta Talks Up Demographic Advantage

A classroom wall in SDN Sangkanmanik 1 damaged by a landslide in Banten Province. (JG Photo/Benjamin Soloway)

Jakarta. Experts and analysts have called on the next Indonesian government to improve the quality of the country’s education system in order to produce a skilled and productive young workforce and tap into the country’s demographic bonus — an issue raised by vice presidential candidate Hatta Rajasa during the debate on Sunday evening.

According to the National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN) the country’s population of young people is likely to peak between 2025 and 2035, with the those within the young and productive age category outnumbering Indonesia’s population of dependents — the elderly and children.

Around 60 percent of the nation’s population is predicted to be in the working age of between 15 to 64 years old during this period, a large number predicted to attract both foreign and local companies to tap into Indonesia’s potential labor pool. 

During the debate, Hatta emphasized the need to take advantage of the demographic bonus as “it only happens once [in a lifetime],” but critics argued that without efforts to improve Indonesia’s human resources through education and without providing adequate job opportunities for skilled workers, many of the nation’s youth will be at risk of facing unemployment.

“The demographic window of opportunity can only become a bonus if we make the right investment in people,” said Mayling Oey-Gardiner, a demographics expert from the University of Indonesia on Tuesday.

“Get better teachers. It may be controversial, the government should replace all of the incompetent teachers if it has to. Revamp their training curriculum and strip away all bureaucratic procedures,” she added.

Ikrar Nusa Bakti, a researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), said Indonesia would also need to ensure that more of its people were receiving adequate education.

“The mean years spent in schooling [for adults] in Indonesia is still low. For girls, it is still below six years, while for the boys, it’s under 7.5 years,” Ikrar told the Globe on Tuesday.

“That reflects the large number of kids who are within the school-age but do not attend school,” he said.

In a 2013 report published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the number of years of education that can be expected by children who are of school entrance-age stood at 12.9 years.

However, the same reports shows that the country’s mean years of schooling for the adult population stood at only 5.8 years.

Ikrar said the huge gap of lost potential would have to be narrowed by the time the country faces the demographic bonus. Ikrar also noted that the next Indonesian government would have to revamp the existing vocational school system. He emphasized that graduates of Indonesia’s vocational schools, originally set to produce skilled, ready-to-work individuals, still face unemployment.

Central Statistics Agency (BPS) data show that the rate of unemployment among vocational school graduates stood at 7.21 percent as of Feb. 2014.

“The government should make sure that by going to vocational schools, the young people will get decent jobs,” Ikrar said.

Additional reporting by Vanesha Manuturi

By Basten Gokkon on 06:01 pm Jul 02, 2014