An evaluation of English language teaching programs in Indonesian junior high schools in the Yogyakarta Province

Abstract

Since the enactment of Law No. 22/1999, the Indonesian Government has been restructuring its governance system from a centralized to a decentralized system. In terms of education, the Law No. 20/2003 stipulates the national education standard consisting of graduate competency, content, process, personnel, infrastructure, management, funding, and assessment standards. English was mandated as the first foreign language to be taught after independence in 1945. In this globalization era, serious efforts have been made to strengthen the quality of English teaching in Indonesia, through the enactment of the 2006 School-based Curriculum (KTSP – Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan) within the framework of communicative competence. The government required all schools in Indonesia to begin implementing this curriculum in 2010; however, there has been no previous evaluation (Liputan6.com). This evaluation study focused on case studies of 12 selected schools of the 504 junior high schools in the province of Yogyakarta. The selection was done through systematic random sampling. The research participants consisted of three groups in the consultation process: (1) national, regional and local education officials responsible for the implementation of KTSP curriculum in the schools under their responsibility, (2) English language academics in four Yogyakarta universities responsible for the training of English language teachers, and (3) as the key strategy, case studies of twelve systematically selected junior secondary schools in the Yogyakarta province managed by the education and religious affairs ministries. Documentation, survey schedules, interviews, focus group discussions and class observation were used to gather the data. The data obtained through this research strategy were analyzed through SPSS statistical analysis, content analysis and data triangulation. The results show that decentralization in education created challenges such as the lack of capacity at local level to assume responsibilities from the central government and a ‘culture’ of conditioning individuals to follow orders from the top, implementing rather than initiating or designing policy. Regarding the teaching of English, whilst the vision and mission of the government in respect of ELT in Indonesian high schools is clearly outlined, the disjuncture between the district level and the individual schools resulted in role confusion among district staff and individual schools. Teachers’ limited capacity in the teaching of English was also a major finding. Most teachers had insufficient capacity, in particular, regarding the pedagogical and professional aspects. Due to the pressure to prepare students for the national examination, most teachers ignored the notion of communicative competence as written in the Government Regulation No. 19/2005. Their attention was more on how to develop linguistic competence and they did not give proper attention to actional, sociocultural or strategic competences to achieve the discourse competence as the target of communicative competence as modelled by Celce-Murcia (1995). There was a lack of motivation for both teachers and students to communicate in English despite the linguistic demands of a global world.

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