POLICY ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN INDONESIA

Abstract

To understand the state of the art of TEFL at elementary and junior secondary schools, a survey was administered to two groups of EFL teacher respondents, namely 88 elementary teachers in Jakarta and 200 junior secondary teachers who live in Jakarta and West Java, and Banten provinces. They teach at either private schools (50.8%) or public schools (49.2%), and 89.0 % of them have worked for more than fi ve years. They are either public (47.4%) or private teachers (52.6%), and most of them are female teachers (69.8%). The junior secondary teachers were participants of the nine-day Teacher Certifi cation Program in September 2011, a mandatory professional development scheme to qualify them as a professional teacher. The primary school teachers are graduates of or are attending PGSD, i.e., four year elementary school teacher education. The survey fi ndings are not generalizable to the whole country, but they present a relatively comprehensive picture of EFL teaching in the basic education units, i.e., elementary and secondary schools. Keywords: Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL), Teacher Certifi cation Program, professional development, teacher education