Skills and innovation keys to advance the nation: VP

Jakarta-wapresri.go.id Skills and innovation, according to Vice President Jusuf Kalla, are keys to national progress.

“Our challenge today is no longer how to enable people to read, write, and count, but how to make people more innovative, more productive, and more dynamic to meet the demands of the era,” said the Vice President when he inaugurated the opening of the 8^th National Convention of the Indonesian Education (KONASPI) held at Puri Agung of Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel in Jakarta on Wednesday (Oct. 12).

To be more dynamic, continued the Vice President, first of all education must be more dynamic.

“A teacher is required to provide quality education to prepare students to face competition in the future, for the benefit of say 10 years to come,” he said.

The Vice President also hoped that education universities could equip their students as prospective teachers who are qualified and capable of preparing students to be better prepared to face future challenges.

According to data, there are 260 thousand public and private schools in Indonesia today, consisting of 174 thousand elementary schools, 50 thousand junior high schools, 23 thousand senior high schools and 7700 vocational school, with the total number of students reaching 50 million people and 3 million teachers.

“With the huge number of schools and students, it is not easy to improve the quality of education, when compared to Singapore, for example, as it has only 5 million people. However, we should also learn from China which has 1.4 billion people, but it is also advanced in education,” he said.

The Vice President also hoped this convention able to give an answer about the relatively low quality of education at present which is not in line with the amount of efforts taken and the national education budget provided.

Earlier, in his report, the Chairman of the Association of the Indonesian State Teaching Universities and Higher-Education Institutions (ALPTKNI) Prof. Dr. Djaali stated that the convention is attended by approximately 1,000 participants from 12 teaching universities and teaching institutes (LPTK), teaching faculties of 29 public universities, and 380 private teaching universities in Indonesia with the theme “Policy Directions for Teacher Education in Indonesia”.

Also present at the event were Minister of Research, Technology, and Higher Education, Mohammad Nasir, the Ambassador of Finland Hiltu Tovio Paevi, and Head of the Secretariat of the Vice-President Mohamad Oemar.

http://www.wapresri.go.id/keterampilan-dan-inovasi-majukan-pendidikan-indonesia/