The Questionable Welfare of Elementary Schools Teachers in Indonesia

Teacher welfare includes a balance between workload and welfare guarantees, such as salary, work demands, management, and administration. Teacher welfare provides a sense of security, decency, internal and external is an order of social, material and spiritual life and livelihood imbued with peace, spiritual and social needs of teachers, families and communities supporting human rights and Pancasila. In general, welfare means the fulfillment of all life needs. There is research which shows that teacher performance can be predicted through teacher welfare. Then, has the welfare of teachers in Indonesia been fulfilled? 

If the government wants many things from teachers in Indonesia, has the government carried out its obligations to fulfill teacher welfare? In fact, the results of a survey conducted by the Institute for Demographic and Poverty Studies (IDEAS) and GREAT Edunesia Dompet Dhuafa in May 2024 of 403 teachers in 25 provinces of Indonesia regarding the wages they get, as many as 74% of respondents have salaries below Rp 2 million and some are below Rp 500 thousand where their salaries are still below the lowest 2024 Regency-City Minimum Wage (UMK). There are some teachers who are required to take on other jobs in the school such as being the school secretary, being the school treasurer, taking care of the school administration, taking care of the school library, being an extracurricular teacher and the teachers still do not get additional wages. Then, regarding teachers' working hours, it is true that teachers get the same days off as the existing education calendar and it is true that teachers' working hours from morning to evening are finished and can go home but when at home teachers still have to do the work of a teacher such as taking care of student grades, preparing materials for the next day, making learning media, taking care of lesson plans, namely Learning Implementation Plans, and taking care of assessments or assessments that will be applied. 

There is also a problem where people outside the PGSD (Elementary School Teacher Education) department can become elementary school teachers while PGSD graduates find it a little difficult to find work outside of that. There is an issue regarding PPG or Teacher Professional Education which is held for graduates of S1 Education and S1/D4 Non-Education to obtain an educator certificate in Indonesia. This PPG provision makes it difficult for elementary school teachers due to unclear scope and boundaries where people who are not PGSD graduates can become elementary school teachers and take PPG while PGSD graduates are still required to take PPG in order to obtain a valid teaching certificate or CPNS test. Some people argue that PPG should be organized for education students whose majors are linear only or include PPG material in the Faculty of Education. 

Elementary teachers are troubled by the provision of not allowing students to stay in class even though they are not yet qualified on the pretext that a student's intelligence is not only judged by being good at math. There are complaints from some junior high school (SMP) or senior high school (SMA) teachers that some of their students cannot read fluently, understand long texts, and cannot perform basic arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. With the curriculum currently in effect, the Kurikulum Merdeka, which focuses on developing teaching and learning activities that require children to think critically and conceptually through various projects, but is not accompanied by a basic knowledge base. Whereas the previous curriculum, children's reading, counting and science skills were honed quite rigorously. It can be said that the Kurikulum Merdeka is not effective to be applied in Indonesia, where students in Indonesia are not accustomed to critical thinking and responsibility, so if given freedom and leeway, it will make them underestimate and not try to learn well. The frequently changing curriculum is also troublesome for teachers because it needs to be readjusted. 

It is the duty of the government to fulfill the welfare of teachers, starting from caring about the salaries received by teachers, the requirements or conditions for becoming a teacher, and equitable education that can be felt by teachers and students. Teacher welfare that is fulfilled will have a good influence on teacher performance in learning activities.