REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Minister of Primary and Secondary Education (Mendikdasmen) Abdul Mu'ti said that by 2025 there will be an increase in salaries and welfare for teachers. According to him, increasing the salary and welfare of teachers was one of the quick wins planned by President Prabowo Subianto.
“I can't name the numbers yet, but there is already a budget in 2025 for increasing the salaries and well-being of teachers, there is already a budget in 2025,” Mu'ti told reporters in Jakarta on Wednesday (23/10/2024).
He said that the figures could not be delivered for the time being in order for there to be an element of surprise for teachers going forward. He said that the president certainly paid attention to the issue of teacher welfare, which is still a serious issue today.
“God willing there will be and that will be part of Mr. President's quick win as well. Because during this time, the issue of teacher welfare is still a serious issue,” Mu'ti said.
Mu'ti hopes that increasing salaries and welfare for teachers will boost teachers' passion to educate the nation's children. He does not expect that what will happen in the future will be the opposite, which is to simply increase the amount of credit to their consumer needs.
“The hope is yes welfare increases followed by a passion to educate that increases anyway,” he explained.
Still related to teachers, on that occasion Mu'ti also alluded to the problem of bullying or bullying that is still prevalent in the educational world. For this reason, the government wants to increase the number of Counseling Guidance Teachers (BK) to suppress cases of lawlessness in educational units. “Master BK is likely if approved for us to make additions,” Mu'ti said.
Even so, he said, for the time being it would make the most of BK teachers available to suppress bullying cases in schools. In the future, there will be training for improving the quality of BK teachers in educational units. “Let's try to improve the quality because during this time we are well aware that bullying or violence rates in schools are quite high,” he explained.
He added that the training is not limited to only BK teachers, but also to teachers in other fields of study. He took the example of teachers of religious education who in his teaching materials also had material related to character education.
Earlier, Ubaid Matraji, National Coordinator of the Indonesian Education Monitoring Network (JPPI), revealed that violence in schools is still flourishing. In 2024, 293 cases of violence occurred in schools. “This trend of violence in schools continues and has shown 293 cases,” Ubaid said in a Public Discussion broadcast on Sahabat ICW's YouTube channel on Tuesday (22/10/2024).
Based on the data he has, the most violence is sexual violence. Where that figure stands at 42 percent. “We see no trend of decreasing cases of violence in schools,” he said.