Yogyakarta Special Province (DIY) is short of school inspectors, especially in junior high to high schools/vocational schools. This issue caused the supervision of school management uncontrolled. In fact, the role of supervisors is very important for schools to help run the school management optimally, not only academically, but also managerial.
Lecturer of Master of Management of Universitas Gadjah Mada, Dr. Eko Supriyanto, said the supervision of the school management does not run optimally. In addition to the inadequate number of inspectors, it is coupled with the performance of the supervisor that has not been professional. "Many schools do not know the work of inspectors and the inspectors are named by the Department regardless of their competence," said Eko in the National Seminar on Improving Inspector’s Professionalism in the UGM Master of Management, Wednesday (11/1).
Eko added that one of the jobs of a supervisor is to guide and supervise to achieve the vision and mission of the school. Therefore, in addition to having skills in managerial, the inspector should have managerial, academic, educational evaluation, research and development and social competence oversight. Related to the inadequate number of inspectors, Eko is concerned that inspector has a pretty heavy workload of having to supervise many schools. He mentioned that in average one supervisor oversees about 40 schools. This condition is not conducive, causing the supervision work less optimal. "Most ideally that one supervisor oversees about 4 schools," he added.
The inadequate number of inspectors also happened in various regions. In the city of Yogyakarta, for example, based on data from the Yogyakarta Education Office, up until March 2011 the number of school inspectors was only 18 people. They must oversee 523 schools namely kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school to vocational school. This is affirmed by one exemplary supervisor of Yogyakarta Education Office that inadequate number of inspectors is due to the local government policy in procuring or hastening the teacher to beome supervisor. "Up until now, there are no standard rules in the region/city for the appointment of inspectors," said Head of Education Quality Assurance Agency (LPMP) of Yogyakarta, Harmanto, M.Sc.
Harmanto admitted that profession as school inspector is less desirable, let alone the one who is appointed as inspector is the teacher at school. "Many consider that becoming a teacher may be more interesting and challenging rather than inspector," he said.
One inspector from the Yogyakarta Education Office, Sri Indah Budiarti, M.Si., said she was the only woman who became inspector in her location. She has to supervise 54 high schools in Yogyakarta, while 63 junior high schools and 32 vocational school are supervised by 5 people. She acknowledged the lack of supervisory personnel is a constraint to supervision and monitoring work resulting from the monitoring and guidance to schools. "Supervision of schools do not run as scheduled," she concluded.