8 Jul
Back To Skool?
State schools are cheaper than private ones so they are in demand from the less well off and this is the period when parents enrol their children: SD at age 6, SMP at age 12 and SMA at age 14. Given that there’s a chronological sequence, and that there are bunches of bureaucrats in town halls and at central H.Q., the Department of Education, it should be a relatively straightforward process.
But this is Indonesia where no-one-says “no” and career public officials are expected to obey those in more senior positions without question, and where the buck stops with one’s predecessor.
Until 2006, around the time that folk started tweeting, school enrollments were done on a face-to-face basis. That year, the Jakarta Education Agency (JEA) out-sourced the enrollments system to state-owned telecommunications operator PT Telkom which seemed to manage quite well. Last year, City Hall took back the management and, perhaps rather smugly, managed to get things done on time.
Cut to this year, and oh dear ……
Having already completed the SD and SMP enrollments, and allocated Rp.1.1 billion (US$127,000) for the SMA applications, JEA sat back and watched as their seven servers crashed.
They have handed back the management of the system to PT Telkom who have provided around 30 servers, a mere 23 more than JEA.
Parents are now resubmitting applications and the senior high school year is starting a week later.
Elsewhere, in Serang, Banten – about one hour from Jakarta, 165,000 primary school (SD) children ‘graduated’ this year and parents have submitted their SMP applications. There are, however, only 73,000 places.
Go figure.
Obviously the bureaucrats in Serang can’t as they’ve had six years to prepare.
You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.