The Importance of Teacher Certification

by

Suci Indah Sari

Indonesia as a country within the ASEAN region, must prepare domestic educators to have a high professionality and to be able to compete with foreigners. In fact, the strategy undertaken by Indonesia has not been integrated as a whole both Republicans made special professional programs that work for increase teacher professionalism through “Pendidikan Profesi Guru (PPG)”. The PPG program pursued by the government will produce teachers professionals who have high competence and are capable of power competitive with foreigners. The purpose of PPG is to get the teacher sertification to become a profesional Teachers. Teachers must be able to become professional educators as explained in the  Mahzab Pendidikan Kritis ” Educators must have a minimum qualification and certification in accordance with the level of authority to teach, physically and mentally health, and have the ability to realize national education goals”

Teacher certification program in Indonesia was mandated by the Law Number 14, year 2005 on Teachers and Lecturers (or the so called “Teachers Law”). The law is an effort by Indonesian government to improve the quality of education in Indonesia. On the other hand, there has been a changing concern from accessibility to quality issue in the educational sector in developing countries. The objective of the Teacher Law is to create good quality national teachers as they should have good competencies in pedagogy, teaching professionalism, personal character and social issues. The certification program may have improved teacher’s living standard as remuneration increase is an elemental part of it, yet its formally-stated goal to improve the quality of education as should be indicated in better students’ performance may not have been achieved. This program, being the largest in the nation’s history, may have confused means and ends. We propose some policy recommendations, they are:

First, the government should implement a reward and punishment scheme to motivate teachers to continuously perform well. secondly, the government should introduced a teacher performance indicator are as close as possible to student’s performance as key evaluation criteria and the reward-punishment scheme must be based on these criteria. Teacher’s certification are very important  to empower teachers who are professional and to raise the teacher's dignity in his welfare, rights, and have a balanced position with other jobs that are more established in his life. The purpose of certification according to Wibowo (2004) is Protecting the teaching profession and education personnel, Protecting the community from incompetent practices, thus damaging the image of educators and education personnel, Assist and protect education providers, by providing signs and instruments to select competent applicants, Building public image of the teaching profession and education personnel and Providing solutions in order to improve the quality of educators and education personnel. In the manual book of  the teacher certification program explain that teachers certification aims to determine the feasibility of teachers in carrying out tasks as agents of learning and realize the goals of national education,Improve the process and quality of education outcomes,Increase teacher dignity and Improve teacher professionalism.

From the explanation can be understood that the purpose of certification is to improve the quality of teacher competencies which in turn is expected to have an impact on improving the quality of education. In addition, it is expected to improve the welfare of teachers financially. the existence of a certification program has made teachers more professional. Able to play its function as a professional educator. That is, teachers can adapt to all changes and the effects of change itself. The goal is the teacher's ability to overcome learning problems and elements in the learning.Besides that and no less important is the welfare of teachers. With good welfare, the teachers will concentrate on carrying out their duties in school institutions. Not too concerned about the family's economic condition. All the minimum needs of teachers have been fulfilled with income as professional educators.Professional teachers become desires of students and parents of students. It's really fun learning with professional teachers. The teacher can understand the character of students, problems as well as a way out of the students' problems.

References

Lestari, S., 2010. Pengaruh Sertifikasi Guru terhadap Kinerja Guru MTS N Mlinjon Filial Trucuk Klaten. Skripsi. Yogyakarta: Fakultas Tarbiyah Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta.

Pangestika, R.R., Alfarisa, F., 2015. Pendidikan Profesi Guru (Ppg): Strategi Pengembangan Profesionalitas Guru Dan Peningkatan Mutu Pendidikan Indonesia, in: Makalah Prosiding Seminar Nasional.

Teacher Certification in Indonesia: A Confusion of Means and Ends [WWW Document], n.d. ResearchGate. URL https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254455515_Teacher_Certification_in_Indonesia_A_Confusion_of_Means_and_Ends (accessed 10.28.18).