Bases teóricas - científicas

Visiting Yogyakarta Province

In August 22^nd to 23^rd 2005, I began to collect data from a series of field visits to Yogyakarta Municipality in the Yogyakarta Special Region or Province. It was our first visit to Yogyakarta as a team with my two RMIT supervisors Dr. Bill Vistarini and Dr. David Hodges. I was also accompanied by my local supervisor Prof Slamet PH, and my two colleagues Mr. Didik Suhardi and Mr. Moch Abduh. Fortunately, later on, I had other opportunities to visit Yogyakarta either as a researcher or as an administrator from the MONE.

Propinsi Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta or Yogyakarta Special Territory Province is considered a special territory because of its historic role in Indonesian independence.

During the Dutch occupation, the kingdom was a sultanate and one of the few kingdoms which refused to acknowledge Dutch authority. During the nineteen forties, the capital of Indonesia was located in this city, and at that time Sukarno as the first president moved around, avoiding the Dutch.

In this province, there are four districts (Sleman, Kulanprogo, Gunungkidul and Bantul) and also one city or municipality (Yogyakarta City). This Special Territory of Yogyakarta province has a total area of 3,185.80 km² with a population of approximately 3,200,517 in 2004 (Yogyakarta PEO, 2004). It is located on the island of Java (south-central part of Java) and is surrounded by the district of Central Java Province on its west, north and east side, and the Indian Ocean on the south side. It is the only province in Indonesia that is still formally governed by a pre-colonial Sultanate, the Sultanate of Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat.

In September 2005 when I proposed to undertake some observations in the Yogya City DEO, one of its staffs questioned me about my intentions as though I were an intruder in their community. This included asking for a formal letter from the MONE. Fortunately, later on, I was lucky because the head of this DEO is someone I know very well as we had worked in the same room in 1994-1996 as staff of the Yogyakarta Education Provincial Office at that time. Since meeting him, I have had no more difficulty doing my observation in Yogya City and I was welcomed to visit and observe its education anytime. From these visits I collected additional information related to the context analysis and the open ended questionnaires previously discussed. The following paragraphs elaborate information gathered from Yogya as a province and its two local territories; Yogya City and Bantul District.

Visiting Yogyakarta City

Educational development in Yogyakarta province is relatively good compared to other provinces in the country. Its highest ranking in Wajib Belajar 9 Tahun (Nine Year Basic Education) compared to other provinces is an indicator. According to the 2006/2007 Nine Year Basic Education Report, Yogyakarta Province, Jakarta and Bali are the three highest achieving provinces in basic education GER with more than 90 percent of its 7-12 and 13-15 year population age enrolled in elementary and junior high schools. This is a significant achievement because economically Yogyakarta is poorer than the other two provinces. Unfortunately, this achievement varies among districts/city within Yogyakarta Province itself. Yogya City is considered as the best developed district.

Obviously, visiting all the districts as well as the city was impractical for me at that time; this is why at first I focused on Yogya City while Bantul District (described later) was visited because of a school rehabilitation program after an earthquake hit the area. Yogyakarta Municipality or Yogyakarta City is actually only a small territory compared to its neighboring districts (Sleman, Gunungkidul, Kulonprogo and Bantul). Yogyakarta city is the capital of the province. It is well-known as a center of classical Javanese fine art and culture such as batik printing, ballet, drama, music, poetry and puppet shows. These advantages of Yogyakarta bring a better economic life to its people. Yogyakarta is the second most important tourist destination in Indonesia after Bali. Yogyakarta is also known as one of education centers in Indonesia. In the old days many students from various parts of Indonesia would choose Yogyakarta as their destination to finish their studies. But nowadays after every part of the country is improving their own education system and facilities, there is a tendency for the number of students studying in Yogyakarta to decrease.

This is becoming a crucial issue.

This phenomenon is interesting, because in one hand the local government is forced to improve its education quality to attract students from different districts and at the same time to increase its local revenue. Probably this is why Yogyakarta DEO’s service quality is relatively better than other DEOs. But the quality of education in Yogyakarta is not only as a result of DEO service quality, but also as a result of its people valuing education.

I still remember when one of the DEO staff who lives in Bantul District (the southern part of Yogya Province) told me a story about his neighbor. There was a poor family in his neighborhood, but the parents and their children were very concerned about education. One of his neighbor’s children went to a forestry high school (Sekolah Menengah Perkebunan/SPBMA) in the northern part of Yogyakarta, although they lived in south part of Yogyakarta. This boy had to get up very early in the morning and ride a bicycle for about 2-3 hours every day to get to his school (Yogyakarta Notes). This story showed me how motivated they are to finish education. If most parents and students are as motivated as they are, it would be much easier for the DEO to direct and improve education quality. Community participation is also built up by strong commitment toward education by all community members, not only by active participation in school committee.

Although most people in Yogyakarta do not have a high income, their high appreciation of education is a great advantage in improving education service quality. The DEO staff continued to explain about his neighbor; “In the old days it was ok for children not to go to school because there were only small number of people in the village, with wide area of land to plant crops and vegetables. But all these lands are now gone, and we cannot cultivate streets or a parking area.

Schooling is the only way to earn a life in a city” This must be another reason why people are more motivated to finish education in cities like Yogya rather than in villages or rural areas with plentiful natural resources.

This conversation with one of Yogya City DEO staff triggered greater knowledge and understanding of these city education aspects. This was the first time I felt the difference between being a researcher rather than an administrator or manager as I used to be. Although I lived in this city many years ago and I visited it many times, but I had not seriously questioned its education system. Being a doctoral student, I now felt as if I had to question anything I saw or heard about Yogya education and needed to answer it scientifically. Unfortunately, time is always limited and the focus needed to be set: DEO service quality.

If DEO service quality is demonstrated by its ability to serve schools; school conditions could then be used as an indicator to show the quality of DEO service.

Observing schools around Yogya City I could not find a school with poor conditions.

But as we travelled to northern part of this province, to Sleman District I could see some schools that were not fully rehabilitated. When we visited one of Junior High Schools (SMP), I could see there were problems with its classrooms and laboratories.

It seemed that the further the schools were from city center, the more problems we found. In rural areas where community support is poor, schools (mainly public) are strongly dependent on DEO services. A poor school tends to indicate poor DEO services. Unfortunately to check each school condition was impossible, and accurate, broad-based data became significant.

Since decentralization obtaining good data has become challenging, mainly because systems, people and facilities were mixed up among different units in the DEOs.

The DEO personnel were unable to show the educational data or information at the time when I asked, but promised to send it on later. After I waited for several weeks, finally they emailed me the data. I suspected that they had worked very hard to prepare it, yet the data appeared incomplete and inaccurate. I had to be very critical and check it with other sources of data and information before quoting it. The following information was gathered and compiled from the Yogya City DEO education profile and other sources.

The following table shows that in terms of primary and secondary education enrollment, the City of Yogya is relatively good with GER percentage of more than hundred percent. I was curious and asked for some clarification from one of the DEO staff. It was explained that the GER is more than one hundred percent for some reasons. First of all, there are students who are under or over school age but still enrolled within the elementary and secondary education. Secondly, Yogya City has better education facilities compared to the other districts; this would automatically attract people from neighboring districts to send their children to go to the city’s schools rather than to schools within their own districts.

Table 4-5:

On the other hand, the enrollment rate in senior secondary education is lower. This might indicate that not all junior secondary school graduates automatically enrolled in senior high schools. When I confirmed this with a DEO staff member, problems of data management emerged. He said that the GER should be somewhere around a hundred percent as described in DEO’s statistics. I questioned further, if the GER is a comparison between number of students and school aged population, and the number of students is lower, then the GER should be less than hundred percent. Since the statistics were already published formally, the staff assured me that it is difficult or even impossible for DEO to revise it. There was a common saying among Indonesian bureaucrats, “Only God knows data.” Statistics are only a basis for planning, the DEO staff explained. Later on I found out informally that the DEO is only responsible for data related to education such as school, teacher or students.

Population in general (non students) is under the Regional Bureau of Statistics (BPS

= Biro Pusat Statistik), this is why DEOs never know for sure about the data of population, they just take it for granted from BPS, and whenever a problem occurs further confirmation is too difficult. At the end, I was allowed to quote the above table, but only for the purpose of this study because the senior secondary education GER is different from its original. What data! The more we explored the more problems emerged. This is why I limited the discussion only to some important data for illustrating aspects of the DEOs.

Table 4-6:

Source: The Profile of Yogya City Education, DEO of Yogya, 2005

Using factors influencing service quality identified in the open ended questionnaires, the above table shows that facilities (class rooms) and education personnel (teachers) still have problems. About 13 percent of elementary classrooms (145 classrooms) are in poor condition, indicating that even in a relatively big city like Yogya poor classrooms could still be found. One DEO staff explained that many of the elementary schools were built in the 1970s when Indonesia was experiencing an oil boom, and have never been significantly rehabilitated ever since. In addition, unqualified teachers also still exist both in public and Islamic elementary schools (almost 5 percent). To improve both factors (classrooms and teachers) in a short time would be a challenging task for Yogya City DEO, especially because of the amount of finances needed.

Unlike elementary schools, the following simple Junior High School statistics give an impression that Junior High Schools are, in general, better than elementary schools especially shown by better classroom conditions. Only about 0.5 percent (4 out of 678) classrooms are in poor condition, this is far better than the elementary school classrooms. On the other hand, problems with teacher qualification still exist in junior high schools. This is another challenging task for the DEO.

Table 4-7:

Quality of Teachers and Facilities in Yogyakarta City Junior High Schools 2005

Component

SMP (Junior High)

MTs (Islamic JHS)

Total

Schools 60 7 67

Classrooms

• Baik (Good) 678 55 733

• Rusak Ringan (Medium) 15 0 15

• Rusak Berat (Poor) 4 0 4

Guru (Teachers

• Layak mengajar (qualified) 75,79 86,85

• semi layak (semi qualified) 11,32 11,74

• tidak layak (not qualified) 12,89 1,41

Source: The Profile of Yogya City Education, DEO of Yogya, 2005

It is interesting to note that there are only 2 elementary Islamic schools in the city, while on the other hand there are 7 junior and 7 senior Islamic secondary schools. It seems that some junior or senior Islamic school student intakes are coming from public elementary and junior secondary schools. This is an indication that there is a flexibility regarding cross registration where students from public elementary schools could enroll to junior Islamic schools in the city.

Regarding public, vocational or Islamic senior high schools, the following table provides short descriptions. Again, compared with elementary school classrooms, the senior high school classrooms are generally better. Only six out of 1081 classrooms are categorized as in poor condition. In terms of teacher qualification, it seems that public, Islamic and vocational high schools experience similar problems. Among the three, the Islamic high schools have the highest percentage almost fourteen percent of its teachers are not qualified. This is another problem for the DEO to resolve. The lower the number of poor classrooms and unqualified teachers, the better the DEO is serving school needs.

Table 4-8:

Quality of Teachers and Facilities

Yogyakarta City Senior High and Vocational Schools 2005

Component Source: The Profile of Yogya City Education, DEO of Yogya, 2005

So it can be seen that there are still problems at all levels of education. Even though only limited aspects of educational data were explored, nevertheless it gave an indication that problems related to personnel and facilities (as mentioned by many respondents in their open ended responses) did exist in Yogya City. Unfortunately within the very limited time of my visit, I could not explore all the other factors influencing service quality (management, funding and geography/external factors).

From some discussions with some DEO staff however, it can be initially concluded that the problems with school facilities and personnel indicate these other three factors. It sounds reasonable because school facilities and personnel are in many ways a result of DEO management supported by its funding and external or community participation. It shows that my observation in this visit support, in many ways, the respondents’ views about factors influencing DEO service quality.

Besides collecting data from some observations as discussed above, I also conducted some interviews or consultations with important respondents in Yogyakarta City such as the DEO head (Kepala Dinas), the BOE Chairman (Ketua Dewan), School personnel (Principal and or teachers), and the School Committee Chairman (Ketua Komite Sekolah). Only significant issue as the result of this interview and discussion is described in the following paragraphs. The interviews or consultations were

guided by questions related to my research questions such as; what is the current situation of service quality and what is actually meant by service quality? What efforts are needed to improve service quality? And what strategy is needed to implement service quality?

As a start-up at first, I interviewed the head of the Yogyakarta District DEO by asking the question; what is meant by service quality that you provide to your schools? The answer was: I would say service quality is a service that I give to my schools in the dimensions of management and leadership. I asked further question:

What kinds of service do you give to your schools? He answered I give funds, I train them, and I give them school facilities.

When I asked him: What new practices do you want to apply in order to improve the service quality given to your schools? He confidently answered my question: I will develop a holistic system of service quality, I will develop my DEO’s capacity to do the job, and I will develop resources required to provide good services to my schools i.e. human, financial, and material resources for both soft and hardware.

His ideas of good practices for service quality were clear and comprehensive.

And then I tried to ask a more detailed question: Can you tell me what is meant by system, institution, and resources in order for your DEO to be able to offer better service quality to your schools? Again, he replied confidently: By system I mean policy and regulation development so my DEO is able to provide better service quality to my schools. By institution I mean my DEO has to have a clear and good direction and guidance, management, organization, leadership, entrepreneurship, and monitoring and evaluation. By resources I mean my DEO has to have the necessary and sufficient resources (human, financial, and material) to run my DEO in order to be able to offer better service quality to my schools. In addition, I propose to improve the current MSS i.e. the Ministry Decree 129a/U/2004 covering all dimensions above. The new Government Regulations 38/2007 and 41/2007 must be used as a references to formulate the new MSS.

When he was asked: How do you go about changing from the current to new practices of DEO service quality? His brief and succinct answer was: It requires preconditions for successful new practical implementation such as resources,

institutions with capacity, and clearly established legal aspects. However, the most important point is that, new practices will be successfully implemented if they are generated from the bottom up (from the perspective of consumers of new practices of DEO service quality, the schools). I asked a further question: How complex is it to implement the new practices of DEO service quality? He answered: It is very complex, it involves many different key players, and it includes a wide variety of actions. The answers, although very general were logical and very relevant to the required conditions for successful implementation of new practices.

At the district of Yogyakarta, I interviewed the chairman of district board of education, using the same question as I used earlier. I asked him: As a chairman of district board of education, what new practices of DEO service quality do you expect? He replied: I expect that the DEO will develop a sound MSS, provide the DEO with capacity to do its jobs, and necessary and sufficient resources to run the DEO in order to be able to provide high service quality to its schools. For me, the schools are the most valuable customer of the DEO. If I were the head of DEO, I would like to do my best to facilitate, to serve, to assist, and to empower the schools under whatever conditions.

I then asked the following question: Do you have any ideas of how to implement new practices of DEO service quality? He answered: First, when we implement new practices of DEO service quality, we must be fully cognizant of their complexity and

I then asked the following question: Do you have any ideas of how to implement new practices of DEO service quality? He answered: First, when we implement new practices of DEO service quality, we must be fully cognizant of their complexity and