Education Ministry Warns Indonesia of Teacher Shortage in 2024

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology projected that Indonesia would experience a dearth in teachers, reaching 1.3 million, in 2024 in tandem with several teachers retiring.

"We will experience a shortage of 1.3 million teachers in 2024 due to the teachers' retirement," the ministry's Director General of Teachers and Education Personnel, Nunuk Suryani, noted in a statement on Friday, September 1, 2023.

Suryani remarked that during the 2022-2023 period, Indonesia had as many as 3.3 million teachers in public schools, though many of them will retire, with the average number retiring reaching 70,000 per year.

Suryani also noted that currently, the teacher's profession is less favored by the younger generation. Hence, this condition could lead to a shortage of teachers in Indonesia.

However, she noted that the government had applied several strategies since 2021 to address this problem.

In the 2021-2022 period, the Education Ministry was able to recruit 544,000 new teachers, she noted.

Furthermore, Suryani affirmed that the recruitment of professional teachers this year is expected to reach 600,000.

However, regional governments throughout Indonesia have only proposed an additional 300,000 teachers.

Apart from teachers' recruitment, the ministry also initiated the Teacher Talent Pool, which is a platform for honorary teachers that have met the qualifications and competencies to become permanent teachers.

"Seeing the trend of teacher supply and demand that is almost always unbalanced, the Education Ministry had conveyed its initiative regarding the Teacher Talent Pool to the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI)," Suryanti remarked.

She explained that the Teacher Talent Room is similar to the marketplace that provides available teachers to fill the dearth of teaching staff from the platform.

In addition, the government has challenges in producing quality prospective teachers. Hence, Suryani emphasized the need for collaboration with various parties to improve the teachers' quality in Indonesia.

According to Suryani, the collaboration is needed, starting from advocating for local governments to preparing and assisting prospective teachers and developing supporting documents for the implementation of Teacher Professional Education (PPG), among others.

ANTARA

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