Written by Sekar Ningtyas Kinasih, Content Writer
Project Child Indonesia
International Youth Day has become an annual celebration that designated for young women and men around the world– trusted to be the essential partners in encouraging human rights and development. The notion of the commemoration created on 12 August 1999 in Lisbon, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY)– known as a strategic framework of guidelines for supporting, empowering and improving every hardship that faced by the world’s youth. The program also incites to raise the awareness that young people are counted as a powerful agent to represent a better world: both today and the future. The statement strengthened by Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO in one of her writings that state “Young people are not only our future, they are our present. They are the most connected, the most outspoken and the most open-minded generation the world has ever seen”.
Each year, International Youth Day (IYD) relies upon a new theme as a conceptual plan that communicates the chances, guidances and explicit objectives for every individual to take action. This year, 2019– IYD comes up with a theme of “Transforming Education” as a highlight goal to make education more universal and approachable for all the young people, involved the youth themselves– where it also refers to Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDG) to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.’’ It also derives from the global statistic results which revealed that there are just 10% of people in low-income countries who complete upper secondary school, 40% of the population in the world who never taught or completely understand their mother tongue and over 75% of secondary school refugees are out of school.
On top of that, in 2015 the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) research showed that 42% of Indonesian students failed in reaching the minimum standards and performed at lower levels in science, reading and mathematics defeated by students in neighboring Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. In further analyses that were conducted by some of the international organizations, the struggle in improving Indonesia education system typically caused by insufficient funding, the inadequacy of human resources, poor incentive system and management. For more than a decade, Indonesia Ministry of Education and Culture have generated strategic plans to build smart and competitive individuals so they are capable to be successfully for jobs and many greater opportunities as it helps in raising the economic competitiveness.
However, facing the battle of inferior Indonesia education quality has been rooted in politics and power affairs which affecting to the lack of financial, human resources and administrative requirements for a high quality education system. Therefore, referring back to the new theme of International Youth Day’s current year that transforming the education system to be more equitable and inclusive are needed big part’s role; including the youth themselves as often being the “knowers” and “actors” in educational change-makers. The governments have to stay responsible and persistent in building a powerful education system for society at all levels and backgrounds. Citizens have to stay engaged with the governments liable– but the young people must take bigger parts through conjoined with other parties such as NGOs, business players, social enterprises and more platforms to transfer quality education as to form a safe and better future.
