Candidates to be merged?
SD Kauman 3 and 4 are situated on the same site around the same small school yard. SD Kauman 4 has 175 students and SD Kauman 3 has 116 students. In grade 5 at SD Kauman 4 there are 28 students whereas grade 5 in SD Kauman 3 has only 14 students.

There is a complete staff of teachers in each of the schools, with the exception of the lack of a sports teacher in SD Kauman 3, while many of the other schools in Batang sub-district have shortages of teachers. Each of the schools has a collection of library books but no room to use as a library. The condition of a number of classrooms in SD Kauman 3 is already poor (with holes in the roofs). The two schools already have a single school committee.

Based on the analysis of the mapping data a merger of these two schools is being proposed. The children will be able to be spread more evenly across the classes if there are parallel classes. Where there are no parallel classes the excess teachers can be used at schools which are short of teachers. A classroom which is no longer used can be turned into a library. The classrooms which are in bad condition may possibly not need to be used any more.

The “Art” of School Mergers
The experience of Tulakan sub-district, Pacitan: Regrouping the merging of (normally two) schools to become one seems a simple concept, but difficult to implement in practice.

The “Art” of School Mergers (continued)
The problems which normally arise include complaints from the community (parents), one of the school principals (who will lose his or her position), teachers (who have to move schools), etc. As a result, only a few schools are successfully merged, even though on paper more need to be merged.

For schools with small numbers of students which are situated well apart from each other (which makes it difficult to merge them) the schools can be changed from conventional primary schools (with 6 class teachers) to small primary schools (with 3 class teachers). Meanwhile for private schools the decision is left to the school management, but local government decides on a minimum number of students for schools to be eligible to receive certain kinds of assistance. With such mechanisms it is hoped that the essence of the school regrouping (improving the efficiency of education provision) can be carried out in various kinds of schools.

Making Efficient Use of Teachers
All areas complain of teacher shortages, whereas in fact in several areas the ratio of the number of students to teachers is fairly low. The basis of calculating the number of teachers needs to change. At present the number of class teachers in primary schools is calculated according to the number of grades (normally six). However few children there are for one grade (sometimes less than five students) schools still feel they need one teacher per grade. As a result there are some teacher teaching small numbers of students (often less than 15), while others have to teach more than 60.

Is there an alternative? In most countries teachers are allocated to schools based on the numbers of students, not on the number of grades. For example, in some parts of India teachers are allocated to schools on the basis of one teacher for every 40 students. Of course, this means that many teacher have to teach multi-grade classes – but this is not too difficult when teachers get used to it. If teachers were allocated to schools according to the number of students, perhaps there would be no shortage of teachers, and perhaps no classes without a teacher. Is any district brave enough to give it a try?