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INTRODUCTION
The Managing Basic Education (MBE) program has been working in five districts of the two provinces of Central Java and East Java since early 2003. It has recently secured extra funding from USAID enabling it to expand into another five districts within these same two provinces and to extend its activities until the end of March 2007.
The program supports a variety of activities and stakeholders at school, sub-district and district levels. A major aim is to develop models of good practice which can be seen to be working well and benefiting the intended recipients. In essence, the activities aim to support the development of the following:
school based management (SBM), community participation (PSM) and improved quality of the teaching learning (PAKEM) provided at basic education level:
local government capacity to better manage its education resources (personnel, infrastructure, supplies and finances), especially that of district and sub-district education offices (Dinas Pendidikan); and
good education governance through democratic and accountable institutions such as school committees, Education Boards (Dewan Pendidikan) and DPRD (local government).
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MBE aims
"to develop models of good practice in each of its areas of work. It is clear that models which can be seen working and whose benefits are directly visible are likely to be received and adopted more widely. Visits to schools in Probolinggo which are implementing school based management resulted in instant change in a number of visiting schools. A talk on formula funding of schools by the head of the city development agency in Magelang immediately spurred three districts to start developing heir own schemes." (TORs for the studies, see Annex A)
Some of the MBE activities build on those initiated and developed over several years in Indonesia, particularly the active learning program ALPS/CBSA and the UNICEF/UNESCO CLCC program. Others aim to assist with the setting up and development of new institutions and systems that are encompassed in the 2003 Education Law, namely school based management and school committees. It is the activities in these areas which are the subject of these studies.
The Three Studies
School based management encompasses first, improved teaching learning activities in the school and classroom to promote children's skills and understanding. Second, it includes transparent, accountable and inclusive management of the school from the identification of problems/ constraints through to the planning of concrete workable solutions to overcome those difficulties. This envisages a clearer role for both the school principal and the teaching staff. It also includes a stronger, more defined role for the school's community. Members of both the teaching staff and the community sit together on the school committee to assist and support their school. The positive Role of the School principal is considered in the literature to be paramount to bring about worthwhile, relevant and sustained changes in schools.
Just what that role encompasses was the subject of the first study. The second study looked at the Role of the School Committee in assisting schools to change. The third study, Changes in Probolinggo, looks at the changes in classroom and school practices in this district and attempts to answer the questions how? and why? The district as a whole is generally considered by MBE staff to be ahead of others in a number of key areas and the study sets out to explore these changes and identify the roles played by a number of crucial change agents.
The findings from all three studies will be used during training sessions with the newly joining MBE districts as well as of course the five original ones. The wider dissemination of the findings to other donors setting up similar programs to support other districts is also expected so that the best practices and models identified here can be replicated and mistake making - though needed - limited to a manageable and less harmful level.
1 Active Learning through Professional Support (Cara Belajar Siswa Aktif) project, supported by the UK Government.
2 Creating Learning Communities for Children project
Methodology
Under the guidance of the international consultant, the research team (varying in size from 3 members to 10 during the second phase) gathered information through observation, interviews, questionnaires and informal discussions with a variety of respondents to answer the research questions posed in the three studies. In order to avoid duplication of effort, information for all three studies was collected during a visit. The three purposively selected districts were: Probolinggo and Banyuwangi, two of the original 5 MBE supported districts, and Banyumas, newly added to the program. A district visit included discussions with Dinas officials and visits to primary schools.
The primary schools known to display changes and innovations in school and classroom practices in these 3 districts were not solely those in the MBE program. In fact, in Banyumas, the sub-districts and schools for MBE support had yet to be chosen. As MBE aims to assist districts to develop and change in a variety of areas, rather than simply targetting a limited number of schools, a majority of the primary schools visited by the team were outside the program. In Banyumas, the schools visited were part of the established CLCC project (since 1999), in Probolinggo, they were a mixture of CLCC, MBE and Dinas' own dissemination schools. For this reason, the research limited the schools visited to primary ones, both Ministry of National Education (MONE) primary schools and Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA) madrasah schools (MI).
During the above, initial stage of the research, a small number of schools were studied in-depth and written up as case studies, the unit of analysis being the school. Shorter visits were made to the others to ascertain the types and strength of school and classroom changes. During the second stage of the research, 6 MBE schools in each of the program's 10 districts were visited, by the larger study team. Two of these primary schools were again studied in-depth and written up as case studies. These case studies and the wider data obtained through the questionnaires fed into the various study reports. The methodology of all three studies and the accompanying research questions appear in greater detail as Annex B. Annex C contains copies of the data collection instruments.
Layout of the Report
The report discusses each of the three studies in separate sections 1-3. The first section 1 discusses the role of the school principal while Section 2 covers the role of the school committee. Section 3 documents the changes in Probolinggo district. Each can be read as a self-contained study, containing research questions, findings and recommendations. Selected school visits by the core team were written up as school case study reports, based on observations, interviews and questionnaires administered. These appear as Annex G. District case study reports for the 5 original MBE districts were written up during the analysis workshop, based on the questionnaires administered in 6 MBE schools in each district. These appear as Annex H.
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