There have been many reports that DIKNAS is now tightening the screws on National Plus and International Schools too. Perhaps Indonesia will finally lose the services of degree-less Jakarta old hands like Matthew France, a former Luke Preece stooge who has been working without a degree at Penabur International School in Kelapa Gading since the start of 2012. Or perhaps Penabur knows which palms to grease and Indonesia will maintain the services of this and other degree-less ‘educators’. Of course Luke Preece, the original Bandung degree-faker, has managed to stay on as some kind of self-styled management expert with only a high school education! So who knows?
There is a blog from someone calling himself Pak Liam (the principal of some kind of international school) who has been signalling these changes for a few months now. Dave’s ESL Cafe also features some posts which claim that original copies of degrees are now being asked for. This, presumably, is to avoid the Photoshopping school of graduates which includes many TBI ‘luminaries’ past and present: Luke Preece, Scott Martin, Jodi Shiek and Matthew France foremost among them. If DIKNAS had been demanding original copies of degrees for a decade, TBI might escaped the scourge of a degree-less mafia faking degrees out of TBI Bandung. They have used their fake credentials to spread a culture of illegal practices through every aspect of recruitment and promotions in the company. Below is a quote from Pak Liam, which explains what some of the new demands from DIKNAS are for international schools. Go the original website to read complete copies of the new regulations:
I was recently at a meeting with a number of Education officials who are working to get the Education regulations into place before the end of the year. They were kind enough to share their draft documents. (even if our school is not entirely happy with all the contents).
Some of the most important aspects include;
- schools will not be allowed to call themselves international (unless they get permission from the Minister)
- all Indonesian students must do the national exams (In Year 6,9 and 12)
- all non-Indonesian students must study Bahasa Indonesia and Indonesian studies
- there will be no more letter of equivalence
- teachers may not spread religious propaganda
- teachers must have a minimum standard of education
You may download copies here.
new regulations (Pdf format, Bahasa Indonesia only)
pp 17 dwibahasa 12 april (docx format and in both English and Bahasa Indonesia)
Sekolah bertaraf internasional (a presentation about the new laws and regulations for International Schools in pdf format in Bahasa Indonesia)
tbilanguageschool 
“Teachers may not spread religious propaganda.” This makes me laugh a lot. Indonesia is full of hypocrites in positions unworthy to them. A part of the new education laws are also to minimize Science and drop English completely and replace it with Islamic studies in schools, and this is the other side of the coin. Why don’t they just come out and say what they really mean here?
“The majority of National and International schools here are Christian based SO you cannot speak about religion in class. As for all other schools, we will drop English and Science and replace it with Islamic studies. Thank you.”
Hypocrites.
Good comments, Bekasi Wistle-Blower. Historically, there are precedents for all of this. In the early 1960s President Sukarno led a charge against “neo-kolims”, which is a term he used for all expats, or neo-colonial oppressors of Indonesia. Demos outside Western embassies were a regular feature of the times- the real problems of course were the complete economic incompetence of the Sukarno government. In 1974 there was a huge anti-foreign-capital push in Indonesia, with “imperialist” companies like Toyota bearing the brunt of xenophobic feeling. Since 2011 the Indonesian bureaucracy has been waging a new war on “evil foreigners”, aimed at forcing as many evil expat teachers out of Indonesia as possible. It is nuts, but the teachers of LIA and other 2nd-rate institutions have convinced themselves they will be getting “bule” style wages if they just force out all the Whities. And if DIKNAS doesn’t get you, Luke Preece will!