The Policy Analysis on the New National Curriculum: The Implementation of “Curriculum 2013” Towards Humanistic Education in Indonesia’s Compulsory Schooling

• In Event: Exploring the intersection of humanism and comparative education

Abstract

This study examines the policy of the Ministry of National Education and Culture (MOEC) in implementing the new national curriculum in Indonesia’s compulsory education. Recently, Indonesian government has made a significant change to the national curriculum development in improving the quality of output indicators (school graduates and student’s grade) in the level of primary and secondary schools. MOEC has initiated to design a new curriculum that is called with “Curriculum 2013” (K13) which the content is more based on humanistic education in order to improve and strengthen human capacity to be more educated and humanist towards generation 2025.

The objective of the study is analyzing the Implementation of “Curriculum 2013” in seeking whether the curriculum design is not only effective to improve teachers and students’ performance in the teaching and learning process but also to improve the output indicators quality; school graduates and student’s grade. The main purpose of Curriculum 2013 is improving the quality of school graduates by integrating the principle of humanistic values by considering the feeling and knowledge into the core study and general knowledge. So that the schools can produce the good quality of future school graduates which are more educated and humanist. Furthermore, the content of curriculum is not only more emphasized on students’ cognitive development but also to the students’ attitudes and skills to be more self-motivated on something what they want to learn. Therefore, through this curriculum the students are expected can be able to explore themselves to improve their competencies to be more productive, creative, innovative, and affective. The competencies is improved as well as development of a good attitude, skills, and knowledge so that the students can have a strong character and apply the humanistic values in their future social life.

However, the study found that the curriculum implementation has become polemical for the academic community and society. On its first stage implementation, this curriculum has faced some obstacles such as 1) the unpreparedness of teachers’ competency and qualification to adopt, implement, and transform the new pattern of teaching methodology, 2) the unpreparedness of students’ ability to adopt the new pattern of subject materials, tasks, and homework, and 3) the lack of the availability of the teaching and learning tools, equipment, and facilities to support the teaching and learning process. As an impact, according to MOEC’s data that government reduced the implementation target from 30% to 2% of all schools. Furthermore, parents have to take an extra work, attention, and cost to follow the unfamiliar pattern of the curriculum in assisting their children on doing school homework, tasks, and exam preparation.

Even though the government has created some programs to provide the concept of Curriculum 2013, the availability of textbooks, teacher trainings, mentoring, and monitoring and evaluation, however, the first stage of implementation has caused complicated procedures, efforts, and high costs.

This study used qualitative method that was more based on literature reviews and data collection of primary and secondary data. The data consist of input indicators (the condition of teacher’s quality and qualification, the availability of books, and school facilities) and output indicators (the condition of school graduates and student’s grade) that was collected from MOEC’s Data.

The implication of this study is expected can inspire government in reconsidering the implementation of Curriculum 2013 whether that is really effective to improve the output indicators quality; school graduates and student’s grade in achieving mission towards humanistic education in the future. This study is also expected can contribute as a comparison study to the educational researchers in exploring the main problems and finding the effective solution for the curriculum development and its implementation, particularly in Indonesia’ compulsory education.

Keywords:
Humanistic education, Curriculum 2013, quality of input indicators, quality of output indicators, school graduates, student’s grade

Author

• Fauzanah El Muhammady, The Ministry of Religious Affairs, Republic of Indonesia