IO – On National Teachers’ Day, which is commemorated every 25 November, the Chairperson of the Parliament, Puan Maharani, urged the government to pay attention and increase the welfare of teachers, especially honorary teachers. According to her, improving the welfare of teachers is considered to have an impact on the quality of Indonesian education. Because of this, the Parliament supports the government’s plan to enable honorary teachers to become government employees with a Contract Agreement (PPPK) in 2021. Based on the government’s plan, there will be one million honorary teachers from public and private schools who will become PPPK. Puan hopes that this plan will be realized.
“This must be a serious concern, and we at the Indonesian Parliament honorary teachers and the appointment of honorary teachers to become National Civil Employees. This year’s National Teachers’ Day commemoration should be momentum to emphasize our commitment and efforts to improve teacher welfare to improve the quality of education and the competence of Indonesia’s human resources,” said Puan in a press statement, Tuesday (11/25/2020).
Further, Puan expressed her appreciation to teachers who continue to be committed to educating the nation’s to the Covid-19 pandemic. She agrees that distance learning currently creates extra challenges for teachers in organizing teaching and learning. “Teachers are required to innovate and be creative with distance or online learning models so that some visit their students, in turn, to assist while studying at home. Thank you to the teachers, for their commitment times like this,” added this PDIP politician.
In line with Puan, Chairman of Commission X Syaiful Huda said that during the 75 years of Indonesia’s independence, teachers had never received proper compensation. “Therefore, on this teacher’s day, I want to say that the agenda for the welfare of our teachers cannot be postponed any more,” he said.
Furthermore, he encouraged the government to continue to improve the skills and competencies of teachers so that they can adapt to the needs of the times. Regarding the need for competence, Huda assessed that the problem was not only with the teachers themselves but those from upstream to downstream. In this case, since the education process at the Education Personnel, Education Institute to the policies of the Ministry of Education and Culture as a large education center to be able to accelerate the process of increasing teacher competence. This is because, based on the results of the evaluation, many policies are often only lip service, for example about teacher certification.
Teacher certification does not mean anything; those who are not certified are sometimes better teachers. This means that there is an ineffective system that must be fixed.
Therefore, I invite this momentum, let’s support the sincerity and dedication of our teachers by building new competencies of our teachers,” said this PKB politician.
As is well known, as a tribute to teachers, the government of the Republic of Indonesia through Presidential Decree Number 78 of 1994, stipulates November 25, apart from being the PGRI anniversary, as National Teacher’s Day as well. Law Number 14 of 2005 concerning Teachers and Lectures confirms that teachers are professional educators with the main task of educating, teaching, guiding, directing, training, assessing, and evaluating students in early childhood education through formal education, basic education, and secondary education.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Indonesian teachers were still actively seeking the best solutions for learning to take place. Some teachers arrange children into small groups and are visited in turns. Some enter the school using a rotating schedule with very strict health protocols. Some come to the students’ homes and discuss matters with the students’ parents to help with the teaching and learning process at home. Some are looking for an internet signal across the river, and so on. “Happy National Teacher’s Day! Raise the spirit to realize the freedom to learn.” (dan)