Out of the Ashes:Destruction and Reconstruction of East Timor

Abstract for chapter 3

Author: Gavin W. Jones‘East Timor: education and human resource development’ examinesthe state of education at the time of Indonesian invasion, theeducational developments since 1975, the structure of employment,and the issues ahead.

The state of education as left by the Portuguese is noted as are thechanges brought about by the Indonesian government. There is acomparison of the literacy rate between those people born in EastTimor and non-native East Timorese. The lack of tertiary educationand its effect upon the population is considered, as is the languagedebate. Inequalities in employment opportunities are highlighted. Thelack of qualified teachers is a concern; few East Timorese are qualifiedto teach above the primary school level. The lack of job opportunities,generally for the better educated, is frustrating while considerableemployment is needed to rebuild the structure of government andinfrastructure of the country.

In order for the East Timor economy to grow, the country has todevelop strongly in areas such as manufacturing and tourism, bothof which will require high levels of education and human resourcedevelopment.

Keywordseducation, educational attainment, employment, enrolment ratios, jobshortages, literacy rate, primary education, secondary education, teachershortages, tertiary education, University of East Timor

Published by ANU E Press, 2003

3

East Timor: education and humanresource development

Gavin W. Jones

The educational situation at the time of Indonesian invasionThe Portuguese colonialists did very little to educate the populationof East Timor. Until almost the very end of their 450 years ofcolonisation, education was established solely to meet the demandfor colonial administrative officials. The Portuguese left the countrywith an embryonic education system, and a predominantly illiteratepopulation. The literacy rate at the end of Portuguese rule is estimatedto have been only 10 per cent (Saldanha 1994:60). Since literacy ratesfor the adult population as a whole reflect the educational situationprevailing decades before the present, the adult literacy rate for EastTimor in 1990 (33 per cent, compared with 79 per cent in Indonesiaexcluding Eastern Indonesia) also reflects the very limited efforts ofthe Portuguese to provide education.

The Portuguese left educational activities largely in the hands ofthe Catholic church, which established a number of schools (colegio).The colonial administration began to give more attention to educationfollowing a revolt in 1959. The number of elementary school studentsrose from 4 898 in that year to 27 299 a decade later, and a furthersharp rise was recorded to 57 579 in 1971-72 (Saldanha 1994:Tables2.3, 2.4). The latter figure must be viewed with some suspicion,however, because the figure the year before was only 32 397. Pupil-teacher ratios were very high, rising from the mid-30s in the early

42 Gavin W. Jones

1960s to over 50 from 1968-69 onwards, a figure so high that ithas serious implications for the quality of education. Teachers werevery hard to find, because few Timorese had more than a primaryschool education, and recruitment of teachers from Portugal orfrom the more advanced colonies met with the obstacles of lackof funds and lack of enthusiasm on the part of the teachers to goto East Timor.

The first secondary school was only opened in 1952. Enrolmentsremained extremely small, with numbers fluctuating in the range from200 to 800 students during the course of the 1960s. There was noprovision of education at the tertiary level.

Educational developments since 1975The greatest source of pride for Indonesia since its annexation of EastTimor in 1975 has been its provision of basic education. The numberof schools has multiplied, and every village had a primary school byabout 1985.1 Table 1 shows the trend in the number of schools, teachersand pupils at the primary education level, and Table 2 shows the trendsfor high school and tertiary education. The number of primary schoolpupils in the first two or three years of Indonesian rule appears to havebeen lower than in the final years of Portuguese rule, presumably reflect-ing the difficulties the Indonesians experienced in imposing order andinitiating a new system of education. But the numbers were buildingup quickly by the beginning of the 1980s.

In the case of both primary and secondary education, there wereimpressive increases in number of schools and of student numbersthrough the 1980s, but decreases in student numbers beginning in thelate 1980s in the case of primary education and after the school year1990-91 in the case of lower and upper secondary education. Thesedecreases, occurring in the face of continuing increases in the numbersof children in the relevant age groups, imply significant declines inschool enrolment ratios in the early 1990s.

1 This is a rough estimate. There are 442 villages (desa) in East Timor. By1985 there were 497 primary schools in the province. Even allowing for the factthat many of these primary schools were in the towns such as Dili and Baucau,the figures suggest that in 1985 or shortly thereafter, there would have been aprimary school in every village.

East Timor: education and human resource development 43

The 1990 Population Census and the 1995 Intercensal Survey (Supas)are the most up-to-date and complete sources of data on theeducational composition of the population of East Timor. Tabulationsfrom these sources with regard to literacy, school enrolment, andeducational attainment are available in Jones and Raharjo(1995:Chapter 8) and Tandjung and Sutomo (1998). They indicate arapid improvement over time in all these measures, but a continuinglag compared with other provinces of Indonesia. For example, in1995, 33.1 per cent of the adult population of East Timor (aged15+) had completed primary school or proceeded further in theireducation, compared with 65.2 per cent in Indonesia. In East Timor,19.9 per cent had completed junior secondary school or more,compared with 33.1 per cent in Indonesia. But these figures partlyreflect the limited provision of education during the Portugueseperiod. The rise in educational attainment between the cohortseducated mainly in the 1960s and 1970s and the cohorts educatedmainly in the 1980s and 1990s was very sharp. A relevant comparison

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44 Gavin W. Jones

is with the neighbouring province of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT).According to data in the 1995 SUPAS, East Timor was ahead ofNTT in the proportion of the 20-29 year age group who hadcompleted at least lower secondary school (35.5 per cent in EastTimor; 30.6 per cent in NTT). But East Timor lagged far behindNTT in the same statistic for the age group 40-59: 6.1 per cent forEast Timor; 12.7 per cent for NTT. This age group passed throughthe school-going years during Portuguese rule in East Timor.

Neither the numbers in school shown in Tables 1 and 2 nor thefigures on educational attainment just cited differentiate between nativeEast Timorese and the children of non-East Timorese (for examplethe children of transmigrants, government servants and the military).Since virtually all non-East Timorese fled prior to or following the1999 referendum into East Timor’s future, and few are likely to returnto East Timor after independence, the relevant information in relationto East Timor’s prospects for future development concerns the

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East Timor: education and human resource development 45

schooling of the native East Timorese. It has been possible to extractsuch data from the 1990 Population Census and the 1995 SUPAS bytabulating the educational data according to whether the head ofhousehold was born in East Timor or not. Tables 3 and 4 comparethe educational attainment, enrolment ratios and literacy for thoseliving in such households and those living in households where thehead was not born in East Timor.

Table 3 shows the proportions illiterate in 1990 in householdswhere the head was born in East Timor and in other households.The differences are striking. Among the East Timorese population,illiteracy is extremely high in all age groups aged 40 and over, particularlyamong women. It only falls below 50 per cent in the 15-24 year agegroup. By contrast, illiteracy among non-native East Timorese is muchlower; for males, percentages illiterate fall to single digit figures at allages below 55-59, and for females at all ages below 35-39.

Educational attainment reflects the same kinds of extremedifferences between native East Timorese and non-Timorese. Table 4shows the 1995 data on educational attainment of persons living inhouseholds where the head of household was born in East Timor.The most striking fact is that even in the age group 15-19, which grewup under Indonesian administration, slightly less than half of both males

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46 Gavin W. Jones

and females had completed primary education. The equivalent figurefor the non-native East Timorese (not shown in the table) was 95 percent for both sexes. The proportion with senior secondary educationor above was very low for the East Timorese, though it has beenincreasing rapidly over time. At ages 25-29 this proportion reached23 per cent for males, though it was less than nine per cent for females.In striking contrast, more than half of all adult males, and almosthalf of all adult females, living in households where the head was notborn in East Timor had senior high school education and above.

Tertiary educationIt is essential to have a core of well-educated people in any countryto provide leadership, professional services in education, medicineand other fields, and to fill the senior positions in the public service.There were very few well-educated East Timorese at the time ofincorporation into Indonesia, as no institutions of higher educationhad been developed under Portuguese rule. During the Indonesianperiod, higher education institutions were developed. TheUniversity of East Timor (UNTIM) was established in 1992,financed not by the central government but by the provincialgovernment, with assistance from Catholic foundations. It wasaffiliated with the University of Gadjah Mada. By 1992 it offeredonly four courses: agricultural sciences, English, social and politicalscience, and pedagogy. The quality of the education offered atthis university was very questionable (Beazley 1999:52) and itsstudents numbered only in the hundreds. In 1995, there were 436students registered at the Open University in Dili, and there wasalso a polytechnic with a capacity of 100 students.

Thousands of East Timorese students have also gone to studyin Indonesian universities or abroad, most of them on governmentscholarships. Many of them were reported to drop out, and ontheir return often had to wait for months or years for a job. As aresult, many sought jobs outside East Timor (Beazley 1999:52-53). There is certainly no evidence from Table 4 that many ofthem had returned to East Timor: fewer than 500 persons livingin households where the head was born in East Timor hadcompleted tertiary education.

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48 Gavin W. Jones

LanguageLanguage is a key issue for the future of East Timor. It has to beresolved whether the national language will be Tetun, Portuguese,Indonesian or English. Each have their particular claims to value.One important issue is the proportion of the population that canspeak each of these languages. In the case of Bahasa Indonesia, dataare available from the 1990 Population Census. Table 5 presents thesedata, for the East Timorese whose head of household was born inEast Timor. Clearly, there is a strong generational difference in theability to speak Bahasa Indonesia. The younger cohorts, most ofwhom were taught in school in the Indonesian language, have highproportions able to speak Bahasa Indonesia, but this proportion dropsoff sharply to only 35 per cent for males and 17 per cent for femalesat age 40-44, and even lower at older ages.

The structure of employmentThe East Timorese are heavily concentrated in primary industry(agriculture, fishing, animal husbandry, etc.). Table 6 shows the strikingdifferences between their occupational structure and that of non-East Timorese in 1990. Non-East Timorese were heavily concentratedin clerical, professional and sales occupations, with about 10 per cent

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East Timor: education and human resource development 49

in agriculture, presumably most of them transmigrants. Thisoccupational structure reflects the concentration of non-EastTimorese in government service (including teaching, nursing, and manyclerical occupations), and in trading and marketing activities. Anextraordinarily low proportion of East Timorese workers were inprofessional, clerical and sales occupations, presumably reflecting theirlow levels of education, a bias in favour of outsiders in somegovernment service activities, and the domination of markets andretail trade by inmigrants such as the Buginese and Makassarese fromSouth Sulawesi.

Issues – looking aheadShortage of teachers and quality of education: A high proportion of teachersin East Timor shortly before the referendum of August 1999 werenon-East Timorese. A 1999 report stated that East Timorese constitutedless than 12 per cent of teachers in the province (427 out of 3698). Theother teachers came principally from Java (1205) and NTT (1353)(Beazley 1999:49). Another report stated that only two per cent ofjunior and senior high school teachers (67 out of 3362 teachers) wereEast Timorese (Kompas 8/3/1999). The rapid development of educationclearly required recruitment of teachers from outside the region, butthere were complaints that these teachers did not understand the localpopulation, did not speak a local language, and lacked cultural sensitivity.

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50 Gavin W. Jones

Many children say that Indonesian teachers are unsympathetic to them,that they have to pay a ‘fee’ to attend school, and even a bribe to go up inclass. Teachers themselves complain about the children having short concen-tration spans, coming late to class, not wearing uniform, being disobedientand undisciplined, being only interested in talking about East Timoreseindependence, and of walking out of class ... The conclusion which theteachers and officials often come to is that East Timorese students do notwant to learn (Beazley 1999:49).

Frustrations of school pupils were undoubtedly related to dissatisfactionwith continuing Indonesian rule, as well as to the shortage of jobs forthose with education, to be discussed below. The lack of disciplinereached serious levels in some schools, with teachers facing threats ofviolence from students if they were not given the grades they wantedor were not promoted. In some cases teachers feared for their lives(Tirtosudarmo and Handayani 1993:485-486). The same kinds ofconcerns were widely expressed in 1998 and 1999 (Kompas 8/3/1999,9/3/1999). In this situation, quality of education was the loser, and theNEM (Nilai Ebtanas Murani: end of school level examination scores)scores for East Timor certainly indicated a poorer performance bystudents there than elsewhere in Indonesia.

Looking ahead, the supply of school teachers is clearly a majorconcern. Few East Timorese are qualified to teach above the primaryschool level, and it is unrealistic to expect that more than a handful ofthe non-Timorese teachers would be interested in returning afterindependence (except, perhaps, some of the quite large numbers offormer teachers from West Timor). Special recruitment of teachersfrom abroad is likely to be needed, via development assistance agenciesand non-government organisation (NGO) groups, including theCatholic church. One aspect of the problem concerns the languageof instruction. The choice between Tetun, Indonesian, Portuguese orEnglish as a national language has yet to be settled, and similarly forthe language (or languages) of instruction in schools.

Shortage of jobs for the high school educated: The Indonesian authorities inEast Timor always had trouble coming to terms with the fact that itwas the young people, born since Indonesian occupation of East Timorand given educational opportunities, who were the most vocal criticsof the regime. There were many reasons for this, of course, but one

East Timor: education and human resource development 51

source of deep frustration was the lack of job opportunities for thebetter-educated (Mubyarto and Soetrisno 1991:55; Saldanha 1994:259).This was partly the result of a perceived preference for non-Timoresein civil service positions. If so, it will cease to be a factor under anindependent government. Nevertheless, as noted by one observer in1989, ‘there are almost 25 000 high school students in the province, butthe government can employ at most only 50 new civil servants eachyear’ (Soesastro 1989:219). The most basic issue is the heavily agriculturalnature of the East Timor economy, and the small modern sector. Theneed to rebuild a structure of government administration, as well asthe need to rebuild infrastructure after the destruction wreaked in thepost-ballot violence will provide considerable employment, providedthat enough foreign aid is provided. Once the basic infrastructure hasbeen repaired, and a new government formed, there will be a need forteachers, doctors, nurses, other professionals and clerical workers. Thisshould provide opportunities for the better-educated Timorese forsome time to come – again, with the proviso that funds to employthem must come from somewhere.

After some years, assuming that educational enrolments can beraised again to the levels reached in the later stages of the Indonesianadministration, the problem of limited job opportunities will re-assertitself. Unless the East Timor economy is able to develop more stronglyin areas such as manufacturing or tourism, it will fail to provide manyjob opportunities for the better-educated. And as citizens of a small,independent country, educated East Timorese will no longer havethe option of looking for work elsewhere in Indonesia.2

ReferencesBAPPEDA, 1993. Timor Timur Dalam Angka. Kerjasama BAPPEDA Tk. 1 dan

Kantor Statistik Propinsi Timor Timur.Beazley, Harriot, 1999. East Timor: Background Briefing for Project Identification

Mission (PIM). Canberra: Australian Agency for International Development.

2 Under the Indonesian administration, not only could East Timoresespontaneously look for jobs outside the province, but the Yayasan Tiara ofthe Department of Manpower had a systematic program of sending EastTimorese to other parts of Indonesia to work (Saldanha 1994:264).

52 Gavin W. Jones

Jones, Gavin W. and Yulfita Raharjo, 1995. People, Land and Sea: DevelopmentChallenges in Eastern Indonesia. Canberra: Demography Program, The Aus-tralian National University.

Mubyarto and Soetrisno, 1991. East Timor: The Impact of Integration, An Indone-sian Socioanthropological Study. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University ResearchCenter.

Saldanha, João Mariano de Sousa, 1994. The Political Economy of East TimorDevelopment. Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan.

Soesastro, M. Hadi, 1989. ‘East Timor: questions of economic viability’, inHal Hill (ed.), Unity and Diversity: Regional Economic Development in IndonesiaSince 1970. Singapore: Oxford University Press.

Tandjung, Ichwan Ridwan and Haryoto Sutomo, 1998. Updated Tables for Peo-ple, Land and Sea: Development Challenges in Eastern Indonesia. Center for Popu-lation and Manpower Studies, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (PPT-LIPI)and Demography Program, Research School of Social Sciences, The Aus-tralian National University.

Tim P3PK UGM, 1990. Masyarakat Desa Timor Timur: Laporan Penelitian Sosio-Antropologis. Yogyakarta: Universitas Gadjah Mada.

Tirtosudarmo, Riwanto and Titik Handayani, 1993. ‘Pembangunan danpenduduk usia muda: kesenjangan pendidikan dan kesempatan kerja diTimor Timur’, Analisis CSIS, Tahun XXII(6):476-497.

Newspaper reports‘Derita guru pendatang di Timtim: di bawah Bayang-bayang teror dan

kekerasan’, Kompas, 8/3/1999.‘Guru berdemonstrasi, mendesak pindah dari Timtim’, Kompas, 9/9/1999.