Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The United States (US) through its Agency for International Development (USAID) will allocate 90 million US dollars to launch a basic education program in Indonesia, a USAID official said,

Margaret Sancho, director of USAID`s education department, said here Friday, "We are excited and enthusiastic to continue working with the Indonesian government, the Ministry of Culture and Education, as well as the Coordinating Ministry for People`s Welfare.".

USAID has been funding a program for developing education in Indonesia by establishing a program called Decentralized Basic Education (DBE) since 2005.

Margaret Sancho said that USAID globally wanted to improve the quality of education, focusing on encouraging students to be more involved in the teaching and learning processes at their schools.

Since 2005, DBE had worked with 72 districts in seven provinces in Indonesia, including Aceh, North Sumatera, Banten, West Java, Central java, East java and South Sulawesi, in order to improve the system of education as well as the management of basic education in those areas.

In closing a workshop on the DBE program here Thursday, Glenn Anders, the Director of USAID, said Indonesia and the US shared the same vision in creating young qualified human resources to make Indonesia strong, democratic and prosperous.

Meanwhile, Dr. Femy Eka Putri, M.Psi, a representative of the Coordinating Ministry for People`s Welfare, said that DBE had helped Indonesia in improving the quality of basic education through three essential components, namely DBE 1, DBE 2, and DBE 3.

She said the components were about management decentralization and public service governance, raising the quality of teaching and learning processes and also improvement of relevant non-formal education.

"Trough the DBE program, our government had helped more than 57,388 teachers, 22,998 administrators and 498,312 students to master more appropriate techniques to teach and learn," said Femy.

USAID is an independent agency handling international development programs for governmental matters, such as: economic growth, agriculture, global health, education, democracy and humanitarian assistance.
(T.SDP-05/HAJM/F001)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
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