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PURBALINGGA: Community Participation in a Remote School
Schools in remote areas often face problems in making pro-gress. Besides rarely being monitored by the education office because they are so far away, the support and interest of the community is also normally low.
But this is not the case at SDN 1 Jambudesa in Karanganyar subdistrict, which is situated in a mountainous area far from the town. Since becoming an MBE partner school, this school, under the leadership of the school principal, Bpk Rus-madi has gradually improved the school management. At first Bpk Rusmadi found it difficult to get the parents to help the school.
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Above: Bpk Rusmadi, the School Principal, accompanied by Bpk Muntohar, treasurer of the School Committee in front of the prayer room (Mushola) at SDN 1 Jambudesa during its construction
Below: The Head of Jambudesa Village (wearing a green shirt) together with Bpk Rusmadi and the class parents groups visiting the kindergarten, which started in September 2006
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Then the school committee. the principal and the staff took the initiative to have a meeting with the parents, community members and religious leaders. Several ideas emerged from the meeting about how to make SDN 1 Jambudesa competitive with the favorite schools in the district. After the meeting they drew up a scale of priorities for action in line with local capacity.
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Two programs have already been completed by the school committee to improve the school facilities in the line with the wishes of the community:
A prayer room has been built in the school at a cost of about Rp.17.5 million, using funds provided entirely by the community.
A kindergarten has been built in for the children in the area, who are too young to enter the primary school. Before this the children had to go about 2km, if they wished to attend kindergarten. At the moment the kindergarten at Jambudesa is using the village hall, which is situated on the same site as the school. The wages of the teachers in the kindergarten are paid by voluntary contributions from the community. Children graduating from the kindergarten can enter directly SDN 1 Jambudesa.
So now the facilities at SDN 1 Jambudesa are as good as those in the schools in the town.
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NGANJUK: Learning about Multigrade Schools in Pacitan
Nganjuk district has many remote schools with few students. The geographical location of the district is unusual. In the south there is a mountainous area, while in the north there is a dry area covered in a teak forest.
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This makes it difficult for students to travel out of the area where they live to attend school. They are forced to go to school near their homes, even though the conditions in the schools are often very poor. The schools cannot be shut, even though the number of students in many of them is very small and they are very remote.
The District Education Office has decided to develop multigrade teaching in these remote schools. First of all a meeting was held in Nganjuk district to explain about multigrade schools. Two speakers were invited from Pacitan and Batu districts respectively, Pak Jarno from Pacitan and Ibu Ina from Batu, who gave excellent explanations about multigrade schools.
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Above: Pak Budi with the Head of the Education Office from Pacitan district
Below: Teachers from Nganjuk enthusiastically asking questions of teachers at a multigrade school in Pacitan
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As a result the participants in the meeting were very enthusiastic. In order to increase their understanding about multigrade schools, the District Education Office invited school principals, teachers and school supervisors from remote schools to visit multigrade schools in Pacitan Following this visit, several teachers, school principals and supervisors from Nganjuk took part in multigrade teacher training organized by MBE.
The principals and teachers in the remote schools in Nganjuk hope very much that they can all receive training to learn about multigrade teaching methods.
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PASURUAN: Justice at MTs Nurul Islam
An interesting activity took place at MTs Nurul Islam, during a visit by the district facilitators. This was during a social studies lesson in class 3a. The teacher's name was Gus Hidayaturrohman and he was trying to link theory to reality as a result of an incident which had occurred, involving the loss of a hand phone owned by a grade 3a student.
The activities were very interesting. Students acted as chief judge and two assistant judges, public prosecutor, defense counsel, clerk and witnesses. The student, who was suspected of taking the handphone, was the defendant. According to Ibu Rustina, the activities like this help the children understand the judicial processes in a court of law.
The teacher does not need to explain the roles of those involved in the trial. They can experience it at first hand.
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Students as chief judge and assistant judges explaining the judicial process to the defendant
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