The Time Was Right—Basic Education Reform

As product of the previous Soeharto imposed regime, basic education across Indonesia was by rote learning and totally centralized—appropriate for a regime requiring control of what people learn, but a poor base for creative open learning. Central to UNESCO’s mandate, changing the education regime was a key priority for UNESCO. As this chapter demonstrates, the catalyst for change came from shared concern within the UN system to deal with the massive problem of economic collapse from 1997 to 1998 stimulating an Interagency Team of Agency Heads to travel across Indonesia specifically to see the impact in the very poorest villages of the country—right out to remote regions of Kalimantan. Everywhere Stephen went even the poorest families were doing everything possible to keep their children in school. This stimulus led him to initiate action to develop and implement a program in cooperation with UNICEF to transform basic education in Indonesia towards decentralization, community engagement and open classroom learning. This chapter reports how this program developed that eventually transformed the entire basic education sector of the nation.