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Indonesia consists of an archipelago of 18,108 islands, of which 6,000 are inhabited. Together the islands cover a total area of 1.9 million sq. km and three time zones and extend from the Indian Ocean into the Pacific for about 5,000km. The largest islands are Java, with this also being the most populous; Sumatra; Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo; Western New Guinea, formerly Irian Jaya; and Sulawesi.
The archipelago is very vulnerable to natural disasters, such as tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic activity, as well as to outbreaks of disease such as bird flu. All of these have an enormous impact on the population and extract a heavy economic toll on the country. The population was 232 million in 2010 and grew at an annual average rate of 1% between 2001 and 2010. Nearly 30% of the population is under 15-years-old.
Indonesia’s economy enjoyed a period of sustained growth in the decade up to 1997. However, the country was the worst affected in the region by the Asian economic crisis of that year. The economy shrank by 14%, per capita GDP more than halved, the value of the currency, the rupiah, slumped, inflation soared to 58% and there was a dramatic rise in poverty.
Since then, great efforts have been made to institute political and financial change. These helped the country’s GDP to grow by around 6% in real terms in 2007 and 2008. Although the global economic crisis slowed the economy’s growth to 5% in 2009, Indonesia, together with China and India, was one of the only three G20 members to record positive growth during that year. The comparatively good performance of the Indonesian economy during the economic crisis was based on the country’s lack of export exposure and a strong reliance on domestic consumption as a driver of economic growth. The underlying strength of the Indonesian economy was also highlighted by the fact that unemployment declined and both GDP per capita and annual disposable income continued to increase during 2009, despite the global recession.
Indonesia’s GDP rose by a healthy 6% in real terms in 2010 as a result of strong domestic consumption, low global interest rates and high commodity prices. Inflation increased slightly to almost 5% due to high oil and fuel prices. The economy is forecast to grow by 6% in 2011, despite the withdrawal of monetary measures used to stimulate domestic demand in 2009-2010 and the Central Bank’s plans to raise interest rates. Nevertheless, the government has announced plans to continue investing heavily in the country’s infrastructure and to double its spending on roads, seaports and airports to £88 billion over the next five years.
The size of education (number of students) in Indonesia:
•Kindergarten: 8 million
•Primary: 27 million
•Junior Secondary: 7,8 million
•Senior Secondary: 6 million
•Higher Education: 4.8 million
Indonesian citizens’ right to education as well as the government’s obligation to finance basic education without charging fees are emphasised in the Law on National Education and the Constitution Amendment III. This also includes a mandate for the government to allocate 20% of its overall expenditure to education.
Based on this legislation, the Indonesian constitutional court declared in 2008 that the government’s budget was violating the constitution, as only 12% of its overall expenditure was allocated to education spending in that year. The court’s ruling obliged the government to increase its spending on education and the 2009 budget included a 45% rise in education spending in order to achieve this target of 20%.
Indonesia’s public spending on education remains low, at only slightly more than 1% of GDP. In comparison, other South East Asian countries such as Malaysia and Thailand had expenditure levels of 5-8% of GDP towards the end of the review period. The quality of Indonesian education is low, as are levels of enrolment, especially in low-income rural areas. According to the World Bank, primary school net enrolment rates are below 60% in some of these districts. The state budget for education is expected to be 20.25% of the government’s total spending in 2011 or £17 billion as the Government of Indonesia has made a political commitment to provide basic education and improve the quality of higher education.
There are 82 state universities; 2,800 private and 155,000 lecturers. There was an increase in Gross Participation Rate in HE from 14.62% in the year 2004 to 18.00% in the year 2009 (4,8 million students) so the potential demand for tertiary level education is large.
The Indonesian government has set a goal of providing higher education access to a quarter of its university age-population (currently 14.5%) by 2020—this means an annual increase of about 260,000 students in the next decade.
The Directorate General of Higher Education (DGHE) has allocated IDR 14 trillion (824 million pound) for higher education. The fund will be allocated for staff development, sandwich programmes, twinning programmes, international research collaboration, staff and student exchanges and scholarships for students to take their degree program in Indonesia and for lecturers, overseas.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings lists three Indonesian universities among the 300 leading universities in the world. These are the University of Indonesia, the Institute Technology Bandung and University Gadjah Mada. Indonesia’s number of leading universities is thus fairly low. However, the government plans to improve the quality and recognition of local universities through stronger international cooperation.
The cost of higher education studies in Indonesia varies greatly. Some public universities receive state subsidies and the cost of education can be as low as £100 per term. Tuition fees for private universities can meanwhile range from £620 to £6,200 per year depending on the university and the major that a student chooses. Foreign students are subject to a fee around four times higher than that charged to Indonesian citizens.
The Indonesian education system recognizes two different paths of education: school education and non-formal education. Non-formal education is aimed at developing learners’ potentials with emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge and functional skills and developing personality and professional attitudes.
Nowadays, Indonesia school education adopts a six-three-three-four school education system, which consists of six years of primary, three years of junior secondary, three years of higher secondary, and four years of higher education.
- Primary school: has a duration of six years of education, and receives new pupils regardless of having graduated from Kindergarten or not. Based on the effective legislation, primary school was basic education that continued after the entire education of Kindergarten. This consists of a general education program.
- Junior & Senior Secondary School: with a total six years of study (three years at Junior level and three years at Senior level) after Primary School. There has been a rapid growth in the range of types of vocational senior secondary schools such as — Higher Secondary School-Economics, Higher Secondary School-Family Welfare, and Secondary Technical School — the other types of schools developed were: Teacher Education School, Higher Secondary Sports School, Household Technology Secondary School, Secondary School on Social Education, Secondary School on Industrial Handicraft, Secondary School on Indonesian Arts, Secondary School of Art, Secondary School of Music, and Secondary School on Agricultural Technology.
- Higher Education University; with three to four years for bachelor level and five to seven years for graduate level taken up through university, institute, academy, or other higher education institutions
In 2009, there were around 40,000 students studying abroad from Indonesia (an increase from 29,000 students in 2007) with up to 60% are taking undergraduate programme to countries such as Malaysia (15,000 students), Singapore (10,000 students) and Australia (8,000 students).
Today’s youth in Indonesia consider an overseas education to be a jump-start for success in their career and a way to distinguish themselves from other graduates while competing for jobs. According to the same survey, employers also favour international graduates over local candidates. This is emphasised by the fact that many prominent figures in Indonesia are foreign graduates. In an environment where there is an imbalance between supply and demand for quality educational programmes available in Indonesia. Demand for overseas education in Indonesia remains strong.
The market leader in student recruitment of Indonesian students for English language speaking country has traditionally been Australia (22% of market share), US is becoming a close contender for the top spot (19%). Malaysia as an alternative of affordable international education is growing at 19% of market share.
Based on HESA data, recruitment from Indonesia to UK higher education picked up in all areas in 2009/2010 and total number of Indonesian students to UK continues to growth since 2008/2009. The number of postgraduate research and “other” undergraduate students showed significant growth in 2009/2010. One of the reasons for this growth was a strengthening of the Indonesian rupiah against pound sterling during 2009-2010. While the average exchange rate was almost Rp18,000 per £1 in 2008, the currency had a much stronger exchange rate of Rp14,000 per £1 in 2010.
University partnerships and collaboration in the Indonesia higher education sector is active and growing, although much of the type of collaborations are in the formed of “MoU Agreement” that do not necessarily leads to joint-degree or joint programme. There are several constraints that create barriers for the development of joint degree/programme such as limited funding available to develop this type of partnerships, government bureaucratic and the experience of partners university in developing collaborations.
Indonesia “top and middle-class” private universities are more active and entrepreneurial in developing collaboration with partners from abroad. Most of them also more interested in the students exchange programme that is less complicated to develop. This would provide an excellent starting point for UK institutions who are interested in developing collaboration programmes in Indonesia.
There are a number of modes through which Indonesian universities engage with their foreign counterparts: student/staff exchanges, research collaborations and dual/joint degree programmes. Student and staff exchanges are most common (as they are easier to execute and require relatively lower resource commitment by involved parties), but joint and dual degree programmes—supported by various initiatives—are increasingly gaining popularity.
Currently there are 3 member of staff involve in Higher Education programme including Education UK, Chevening Scholarships, Transnational Education and Internationalisation Higher Education in Indonesia.
To overcome the limited number of staff available in the delivery of UK Education promotion and services, we have been experimenting to form a group of UK Alumni called UK Alumni Ambassador to support our activities. They are being involve in responding to inquiries about studying in the UK, participation at agents exhibition, deliver presentation and public lectures, create news and articles about the UK. It help us in the delivery of our activities and we want to increase their role this year which include income generation and business partnerships for our activities especially that related to Alumni event
New partnership development becomes the main priorities for us in the last two years. In Higher Education partnership, last year Indonesia managed to secure 6 PMI2 funded project and there were 13 Indonesian higher education institutions that received funding from British Council to develop joint programme with UK institutions. Subject areas is varies such as entrepreneurship, English language, tourism & hospitality, biomedicine and creative studies.
We secured partnerships with World Bank in 2010, which provide scholarships to UK for 24 government officials from Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Home Affair and National Planning Development Agency to pursue Master degree in Decentralisation studies. There is World Bank loan value at $130 million for the next 4 years to 11 different Ministries in Indonesia to fund staff from these ministries to do Master and PhD programme in Indonesia and abroad. We are currently approaching local
We also build relationship with the biggest private bank in Indonesia to facilitate interest from their premium customer who considers sending their children studying abroad, especially to UK. Series of promotion activities deliver in 2011 in several cities in Indonesia.
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