A reflection on the implementation of a new curriculum in Indonesia: A crucial problem on school readiness

Indonesian government assigned a new curriculum in 2013, namely Curriculum of 2013 (C13). Recently, the implementation of the C13 has come up with a big controversy because it was setting back to the previous curriculum of KTSP (Scholl-based Curriculum) for majority of schools. Were the schools not ready to implement the curriculum of 2013? This research was a survey research to give evidence on the school readiness in implementing the new curriculum and to find the problems of the curriculum implementation. The samples of the research were 33 junior high schools from seven regencies in Indonesia. The respondents were 33 school principals and vice principals for curriculum affair, 200 teachers, and 200 students. The data were collected by using questionnaires, interview, and obsevation checklists. The data were taken during monitoring and evaluation programs facilitated by the Indonesian Directorate of Junior High School Development Management. The results indicates that (1) the readiness of the schools was 9 schools (27.27%) were ready, 17 schools (51.52%) were less ready, and 7 schools (21.21%) were not ready to implement the new curriculum; (2) the readiness of the schools was affected by the poor of the books’ availability, only 23% of schools had complete student books, the number trained teachers, only 33% of teacher got training, the ICT access, only 17% of school have a good ICT access for all students, and teachers’ understanding on the learning and assessment process, only 37% of teacher had good understanding on the new curriculum. The teacher had difficulties on (1) developing a lesson plan (16%), (2) using scientific approach (31,5%), (3) implementing authentic assessment (43,5%). Students mostly (78,5%) said that learning with the new curriculum is more difficult than it was before. Therefore, specific training on the new curriculum implementation is still needed.