The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The city administration has announced an almost fivefold increase in the number of free tuition cards being handed out to state high school students for the coming academic year.
"The cards will be given to the city's poorest students so we hope they won't drop out of school for financial reasons," the head of the Jakarta Secondary and Higher Education Agency, Margani M. Mustar, told reporters at City Hall on Wednesday after attending a ceremony to mark National Education Day.
The agency will provide 2,500 free tuition cards this year. The program started three years ago with 550 recipients.
During the ceremony, Governor Sutiyoso handed over an education subsidy of Rp 2 million each for 4,482 teachers in both private and public schools, and scholarships of Rp 5 million each for 1,871 teachers. A total of 44,558 private school teachers also received allowances of Rp 200,000 each.
Sutiyoso said in order for students to receive the cards they must present a letter from their subdistrict stating that they were from a low income family. However, students without such a letter would still be able to apply to their school headmaster for the cards.
"School headmasters would then have to visit the applicants' house to prove that they really deserved the cards," he said.
Margani said the agency was in the process of screening card applicants and would inform successful applicants in July, right before the beginning of the new school year.
He added that the administration had allocated Rp 6.25 billion (US$686 million) from this year's budget for the program. Each recipient would get Rp 2.5 million per annum.
He said the agency had offered scholarships and subsidies to poor students to reduce the number of high school dropouts.
According to the agency there are more than 400,000 high school students in Jakarta at 116 public high schools and 60 vocational schools.
In order to improve the quality of education, the administration also plans to certify the more than 40,000 teachers in the city.
"We hope that by 2011 all the teachers will have been certified," Margani said, adding that certified teachers would receive increased allowances.
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