This blog was submitted by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture in the framework of the Teacher Task Force #TeachersMissing advocacy campaign to showcase members’ good practices in addressing teacher shortages worldwide.  

The global teacher shortage crisis is fuelled by the profession’s lack of appeal and the rising number of teachers exiting the field. This jeopardises the quality of education for future generations.

In Indonesia, however, teaching is still a highly sought-after profession as it is seen as a pathway to social mobility due to the job security and stability that come with being a civil servant.

Indonesia’s cultural context also plays a significant role as many teachers are motivated by a deep sense of altruism, rooted in their strong religious and spiritual beliefs. They view teaching as part of their spiritual fulfillment and service to a higher power, resulting in eternal reward from the Almighty, both in this life and beyond.

However, bureaucratic hurdles and limited capacity for teacher certification have affected the quality of current teachers and restricted the potential of new ones entering the system.

In 2019, the country faced two significant challenges; 750,000 contract teachers and 1.6 million uncertified teachers. Indonesia's efforts to address these issues serve as a global model for tackling both the quantity and quality issues in education.

Merdeka Belajar: Tackling the two major challenges of diversity and complexity

The archipelago of Indonesia, made up of 17,000 islands, is home to 270 million people from 1,300 ethnic groups, speaking over 700 different languages. The islands, which span a distance of 5,200 km from east to west, include 50+ million students, 3+ million teachers, and 400,000+ schools.

The diversity and complexity of the country has created a long-standing educational crisis. To tackle this, the Ministry of Education launched Merdeka Belajar (Emancipated Learning) in 2019. The goal? To inspire a love of learning and critical thinking in students. The transformation included overhauling student assessments to focus more on skills, updating the curriculum to encourage deeper knowledge, and revising the teacher and principal career frameworks.

The latest national literacy and numeracy results, show the programmes have helped boost learning recovery with literacy improving by 14 per cent and numeracy by 27 per cent. These results were achieved by prioritising the improvement of existing schools and classroom conditions before allocating resources to improve the quality of new teachers.

Streamlining teacher recruitment, employment and certification 

In 2019, Indonesia’s schools needed to hire a million full-time teachers. But the roles were often filled by contract teachers, who lacked quality assurance. This problem stemmed from decentralisation in the early 2000s, which made it harder for local governments to appoint enough permanent teachers. As a result, schools hired contract teachers without proper training or assessment.

Additionally, the well-being of contract teachers was a concern, as their salaries were far below a living wage, which meant many had to take on two or three other jobs to make ends meet for themselves and their families. The central government recognised the need to raise the civil service professional standards to drive Indonesia’s overall development. In 2021, the government launched the ASN PPPK (Aparatur Sipil Negara Pegawai Pemerintah dengan Perjanjian Kerja) programme. This initiative aimed to simplify the complex teacher recruitment process and ensure that new teachers met set standards. A common framework for competency assessments was designed to streamline teacher selection, with room for adjustments based on the developmental status of each province and region.

The biggest hurdle was aligning the efforts of multiple ministries and agencies involved in HR, finance, and administrative tasks, particularly when it came to managing and verifying extensive databases. Consultations with regional agencies and focus groups identified issues in the hiring process that could be solved together. Effective communication and rapid escalation of problems helped achieve the shared vision. To date, 800,000 teachers have been hired as civil servants with job security, and Indonesia is confident it will meet its target of one million teachers by the end of 2024.

Digital innovation during the pandemic led to the adoption of new teacher training solutions

The pandemic provided an opportunity to tackle the challenge of 1.6 million uncertified teachers through digital innovations in teacher training. In the past, Indonesia could only certify around 40,000 teachers each year, while up to 80,000 retired annually, leaving a consistent gap. Certification used to be done in person by teacher training institutions, depending on the government’s budget and available trainers.

During the pandemic, the Ministry launched a digital platform for independent teacher learning, helping to roll out the new curriculum on a large scale. Building on the success of improving literacy and numeracy, the Ministry applied similar methods for a large online certification programme. This year, about 600,000 teachers participated, with another 700,000 expected next year. The digital format offers teachers flexibility, and quality is ensured through final assessments, just like those used for contract teachers. 

The biggest concern during this shift was the fear that training quality would drop by moving from face-to-face sessions to an online format. To ease these worries, teacher trainers were enlisted to help evaluate coursework and the final assessment.

Raising the bar for incoming teachers

Given the lessons learned from streamlining the teacher and civil service recruitment process and innovating teacher certification, Indonesia now has the capacity to raise the bar for incoming teachers, ensuring continuous improvement in teacher quality, which will in turn enhance student learning. 

The strong coordination between central and provincial agencies has also facilitated better planning for retiring teachers, allowing for future needs to be mapped out five years in advance. This enables the country to plan its recruitment and assessment cycles a year ahead. In 2022, Indonesia piloted the revised programme with 26,000 teachers and that increased to 31,000 and 73,500 in subsequent years with a goal of filling all roles of retiring teachers by 2026.

Indonesia plans to further support this by shifting the teacher training resources that were previously used for in-service certification. Revised regulations also provide more flexibility in selecting trainers from a vetted pool of school-based practitioners and master teachers. Other innovations to encourage classroom-based practice are also promoting school-based initial teacher training in remote and hard-to-fill regions of Indonesia.

The most important change, however, lies in the new teacher selection criteria, which align with Indonesia’s competency framework, focusing on aligning personal mission, fostering a sense of ownership and problem-solving mindset, perseverance, and, most importantly, the belief that all children can succeed with the right support. This is encapsulated by Ki Hajar Dewantara's quote: “Children live and grow according to their own nature. Educators can only nurture and guide the growth of that nature.” Often referred to as the Father of Indonesian Education, Dewantara played a pivotal role in Indonesia’s fight for independence and was a key inspiration behind the “Emancipated Learning” transformation.

A global model for teacher solutions

Indonesia’s efforts to address teacher shortages emphasize the importance of strong leadership, collaboration, and purposeful recruitment. Effective leadership within the Ministry of Education is crucial for making strategic decisions and implementing necessary changes. A collective commitment from all stakeholders, including government ministries, local authorities, and educational institutions, is essential to overcome administrative challenges and competing priorities. Additionally, recruitment strategies should focus on attracting individuals with a genuine passion for teaching, ensuring a resilient and dedicated workforce for the future.

Photo credit: Elfrida

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