“We’re set up to meet the needs of foreign students and Indonesians that may be destined for universities overseas.”įor now, though, after years of talks, the push to apply the new law to the established international schools appears to have stalled. “They want to be able to regulate us and we want to fit into that”, says Brenton Hall, who in April became principal at AIS after having headed up its high school since 2007. The new law would curb English as the medium of instruction and require international schools to form affiliations with institutions abroad. “How would you teach religion and civics in a secular school? We already have a busy curriculum.” “Excusing Indonesian students from their daily routine to comply with the new curriculum may be impractical”, Bemelmans says. Henri Bemelmans, principal at Academic Colleges Group (ACG) International School in Indonesia, says 17 percent of his students are Indonesian. What’s more, international schools would need to meet quotas of locally hired teachers and administrators with advanced degrees – a big ask in a country where only 20 percent of high school graduates go on to university.Īt stake for the international schools are big chunks of the student body that are made up of Indonesians – 14 percent in the case of JIS and 18 percent at the Australian International School (AIS).
That means no more letters from the ministry excusing Indonesian students from the tests. Under the new law, Indonesian language, religious and civic education would be compulsory, as would national exams for Indonesians. “We are in this unknown territory that’s hard to navigate.”Īs the capital’s international schools settle into a new school year, few administrators are any wiser of how the 2010 law will be applied to them. “It didn’t look encouraging,” Carr said, recalling the meeting. But despite almost three years of talks to hash out how those laws would be enacted, some principals saw little progress and still find themselves in limbo.
In 2010 the Indonesian government had passed sweeping new changes for international schools that accepted Indonesian students. Back in November last year, Tim Carr, the Head of School at Jakarta International School (JIS), joined principals from the capital’s other storied institutions to preview new regulations that would extend government control of their schools.
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