Indonesia's Small Schools Project: A fresh look at a persistent problem

Abstract

The delivery of quality education to elementary school students in remote and isolated areas continues to be a major problem in most countries. Solutions to this problem should be inexpensive, easy to develop and implement, and straightforward enough for local educational officials and teachers to understand and use. The Small Schools Project of the Indonesian Ministry of Education is attempting to solve this problem through an imaginative programme unique in its provision of an interrelated group of educational interventions of proven effectiveness. These interventions are: self-paced learning modules covering basic subject matter areas, self-paced evaluation for the content covered, learning groups of six to eight students led by peer tutors, supportive rather than didactic teacher behaviours and regular teacher training sessions to impart these behaviours, active support from the community, repair of school buildings, a small number of carefully chosen supplementary materials, larger teaching staffs, planning which integrates a variety of government offices at different levels, cooperative arrangements with universities and teacher training high schools, continuous formative evaluation, and a handbook which describes programme materials, policies and procedures. Preliminary evaluation indicates that the programme is succeeding. The problems of educating isolated youth are strikingly similar across cultures and temporal periods, and given the universality of this problem, other imaginative solutions should be studied and the results of these studies disseminated.