This freedom is expected to improve the quality of learning
Jakarta (ANTARA) – The Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Ministry is working to ensure the flexibility of the Independent Curriculum to provide educational units space to design operational curriculums that suit their vision, mission, and students’ learning needs.
Head of the ministry’s Education Standards, Curriculum, and Assessment Agency, Anindito Aditomo, said that maintaining the flexibility of the Independent Curriculum demands initiative, activeness, and confidence on the part of teachers in designing their own operational curriculum.
“This freedom is expected to improve the quality of learning,” he added in Jakarta on Tuesday.
He said that the operational curriculum that is suitable for an educational unit in one area may not be relevant for an educational unit in another area.
Therefore, an educational unit’s operational curriculum must be able to accommodate diversity by adjusting to the learning needs of students and the context of the educational unit, he added.
For example, the operational curriculum that is suitable for educational units in Central Jakarta can be different from that of schools in Seribu Islands.
“Character-strengthening projects that are suitable for metropolitan cities will be different from the needs of students in fishing towns and agricultural villages,” Aditomo pointed out.
In implementing the Independent Curriculum, the ministry is providing various examples of operational curriculums, teaching modules, and other documents on the Independent Teaching platform, he informed.
“There is no obligation for educational units to create new documents from scratch. This curriculum change is not a matter of administration but improving the quality of learning,” he explained.
In addition, the ministry has not standardized document formats, therefore, educators can use formats that have been used so far such as lesson plans and teaching modules as well as school report cards or reports on learning outcomes.
Bogor 1 Junior High School in West Java is one of the schools that has adopted the Independent Curriculum.
Deputy head of school curriculum at the school, Dedi Husnaeni, said that the school is currently in the Independent Sharing phase, that is, it is developing an independent operational curriculum and distributing it to other educational units.
The initiative and creativity of learning methods in the curriculum come from teachers based on the learning modules that can be obtained from the ministry, he explained.
“We are also preparing to mobilize teachers who have attended training on the implementation of the Independent Curriculum,” he said.
To date, a total of more than 140 thousand schools have implemented the Independent Curriculum. Registration will soon be opened for participation in the implementation of the 2023–2024 Independent Curriculum.
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