TEMPO.CO, Bandung - The team responsible for monitoring new students admission system (PPDB) for high school (SMA) and vocational high school (SMK) students in West Java discovered dozens of private schools in Bandung had rejected students who are economically less fortunate.
These schools say that they rejected them because of the lack of quota available.
“Based on the regulation, the 20 percent quota includes private SMA and SMK,” said team leader, Iwan Hermawan, on Tuesday, July 4.
Iwan suspects that there is a massive misunderstanding that led the private schools to act as they did, which is all located in Bandung City. He further elaborated his suspicion that the school administrators might have thought that the 20 percent quota only applied to state schools.
There are also schools that blatantly indicated signs of resistance against the regulation. “We’re still completing our data and evidence; we temporarily could not publish the name of the schools,” he said.
The PPDB monitoring team under current circumstances reports their findings to the West Java Education Authorities. Starting from this year, the provincial government has taken over the rules and regulation of student acceptance.
Head of West Java’s Educational Agency Ahmad Hedadi stated that poor students that are not accommodated at state schools can continue their education at private high schools and vocational schools.
Iwan reminded that schools could be sanctioned if they continue to refuse accepting poor students. The government will revoke the school’s operational expenses from the state budget and provincial regional budget plan.
ANWAR SISWADI
