ACEH: First Visit to Aceh Besar

Aceh Besar is a new partner district of MBE and DBE. But even in these early days, one of the primary schools in the district was visited by a member of the US Congress and his family. Congressman Wexler and his family visited SD Perumnas, Neuhen on 4 August 2006.

This was the first group to visit Aceh Besar. They interacted with the stu-dents and joined in an experiment on magnets during a grade 6 science lesson. During the lesson Mr. Wexler's wife and children did the experiment together with the students.

MBE Assists Appraisal Team from Finland

As the first step in the appraisal of a possible project suggested by the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA) to improve the teaching of foreign languages in Islamic boarding schools (pesantren), the Government of Finland send an appraisal team, which visited four provinces between 23 and 31 August 2006.

The provinces were Jakarta, West Java, East Java and NTB. Because the team needed local assistance, MBE lent one of their consultants, Supriyono Koes H. who became a member of the appraisal team. The team consisted of four people under the leadership of John Horgan.

In order to find out about pesantren and education policy in Indonesia, the team visited and held discussions with a number of directors in MORA and the Ministry of National Education.

The team also visited 10 pesantren in three provinces: West Java, East Java and NTB and talked to their leaders, teachers and students to assess the real need for language laboratories and find out what conditions are like in Indonesian pesantren.

One of the recommendations of the team is that to improve language skills it is not sufficient just to build language laboratories but must be accompanied by adequate teacher training.

Bogor Schools Visit Batu and Blitar

SD Papandayan 1, 2 and 3 from Kota Bogor took part in a study visit to MBE partner schools in Batu and Blitar. The group consisted of school principals, teachers and school committee members, accompanied by the Head of Primary Education from the Bogor Education Office, Bpk. Ade, Head of the Subdistrict Education Office from Bogor Tengah, Bpk.Tatang, a school supervisor, and the Head of the Administrative Section.

On Wednesday 11 October they visited SDN Punten 1 and SDN Tulungrejo 4, Batu. During the visit they were able to see how schools develop SBM, community participation and PAKEM.

They observed teachers planning and implementing PAKEM and saw many creative displays of students' work. An interesting thing happened during the visit. During a grade 4B Bahasa Indonesia lesson students were making up announcements.

One of the students called Leikha Putri wrote an announcement appealing to the students from grades 1 to 6 to clean their classrooms because of the visitors coming from Bogor (photo 3).

After the visit the participants discussed with the Head of the Batu Education Office, Ibu Mistin, the Head of The Schools Section and the school principals, teachers and committee members from SDN Punten 1 and SDN Tulungrejo 4, as well as the Head of the Subdistrict Education Office and school supervisors. From the discussions it appears that the visitors will be taking many experiences from Batu to apply in their own schools in Bogor.

1. Hadi Suwono, MBE consultant, explaining about "Big Books" in a grade 1 class at SDN Tangkil 1 to Ibu Wiwin, a school supervisor from Bogor Tengah. 2. The teachers from Bogor of observing directly how Ibu Nuraini plans and organizes PAKEM in grade 4 at SDN Tulungrejo 4. 3. Leikha Putri reading his work accompanied by Ibu Heni the grade 4 teacher at SDN Punten 1. 4. The announcement about the visitors from Bogor, written by a grade 4B student.

The staff of the education office, school principals, supervisors, committee members and teachers from Bogor were very interested in the progress made by MBE partner schools. Ideas which they learnt and want to apply include: The role of the district education office in supporting progress in schools; The role of the committee and parents groups in supporting schools development and providing equipment; The development of PAKEM, supported by the teachers working group (KKG); Making school development plans and budgets in a participative manner; Transparent school budgets.