Project News

The representatives from South Sulawesi Province, Barru District, Janeponto District and Wajo District which PRIMA-P (Integrated Plan for Junior Secondary Education Improvement in South Sulawesi) covers have visited Banten Province which PELITA covers from Dec 2nd to 6th 2009. The PRIMA-P Team consisting of 55 persons visited Pandeglang District which has been implementing PSBM (Participatory School Based Management) and Sumedang District which has been implementing Lesson Study. They exchanged the ideas and challenges.

Schedule of Exchange Program

Students performing the traditional dance and music to welcome the PRIMA-P team.

KIT (Kabupaten Implement Team) in Pandeglang District welcomed the PRIMA-P Team by traditional dance and music performance. 　The counterpart in KIT such as District Education Department, District Religious Office, Education Committee and BAPPEDA (Regional Planning and Development) has prepared to host them. We found their good coordination from their roles. For example, in the welcome ceremony, the head of District Religious Office opened the ceremony and the head of District Education Department explained regarding PSBM. Each counterpart led the team to TPK (Sub-district Education Development Team) and schools.

The questions from the PRIMA-P team can be roughly classified into two categories. One was about the community participation in PSBM, and the other was regarding regional governance such as organization strategy of KIT, budgeting and so on.

A representative of South Sulawesi Province listening to the explanation about school activities.

For the former question, representatives of TPK and schools explained with some examples as following; “it is the most important to invite community to school activity. They can find what school needs” and “The harder students participate in the activity, the more guardians can understand the activity. That is the easier way to accept the community support.” They also advised, “the community support is not only budgeting. We can accept human resource from the community who can support our activity.”

The latter question was more detailed. Each stakeholder shared their experiences on how Education Committee and BAPPEDA started to participate as the member and how they approached the local parliament to secure the budget by utilizing M/M（Minutes of Meeting） between JICA and local government.

KIT in Pandeglang District and the PRIMA-P team committed to try their best to improve the quality of education with high motivation through this program.