Primary Education, Quality or Quantity?

One of the world consensus in the field of education is to guarantee 100 percent that children can solve basic education no later than 2015 (MDG 2015). Related to basic education, the movement of Education For All (EFA) also aims to improve justice to education for girls, disadvantaged groups, and improving the quality of educational outcomes.
 
Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), a research institute under the World Bank made the theme of quality results This basic education as a major issue, schooled in the report From Access to Learning Outcomes: An Unfinished Agenda, 2006. This emphasis on the quality of basic education emerged as a major issue in the referral development of basic education to the next world. Therefore, the acquisition of skills and knowledge base as reading and numeracy standards are valuable assets to liberate the individual from bondage circle endless poverty.
 
The policy dilemma
 
In the Indonesian context, the 1997 economic crisis down the achievements of primary education enrollment rates especially in rural poor families, which in 1988 reached 99.6 percent (CBS, 1988). The Government then intervene in the supply by building new school buildings are located near settlements population, two-shift schools, and contract teachers program.
 
The demand side interventions through cost reduction program schools, scholarships, and assistance (BOS). In Budget 2007, the total education budget for all programs to reach USD 90.01 trillion (about 11.8 percent), still far from the mandate of the 1945 Constitution Amendment, which is 20 percent of the state budget.
Although the JPS-Education program plays a major role to restore the level of daftaran SD, the crisis that has not been fully recovered leaving a number of primary school dropout rates. Recent research states, although not one of the main reasons bersekolahnya-age children basic education is the distance of schools with homes, houses poverty factor ladder remains a major contributor (Elfindri and Davy, 2006).
Do not forget, the EFA program also mandates improved quality of educational output (learning outcomes), especially for children of poor families. The low quality of education at the root problem of low quality of educational outcomes. Echoes of monitoring the quality of basic education are rarely exposed to the 

Indonesian Government.
 
Targeted subsidy program is a positive contribution to the improvement of the quality of learning outcomes of children from groups of the poor and reduce the gap of poor children with the children groups of residents.
In addition, improvement of school management-introduction program to improve teacher quality and monitoring and evaluation results -learning to school leaders is also a requirement of success of the program. Closer scrutiny the progress of student learning outcomes per group socioeconomic characteristics also will be important points of the program.
 
Complementary relation
 
Actually, the quantity-quality relation, which has been accepted as a relation of substitution, can be converted into a relation complementary. Improving the quality of the program remains sustainable and time-consuming require students to attend school. Monitoring program of learning will not be able to walk, let alone achieve result, if the student suddenly drop-outs. The main requirement of the quality of students will increase if students attend school regularly.
 
Furthermore, the law of demand will be effective by itself. When standards of quality have been achieved, by itself quantity is expected to be maintained. This is the explanatory factor, why private schools do not have a favorite lonely enthusiasts. Even in some cases, wealthy parents now have to queue to register children entering SD, 2-3 years into the future. This on the contrary, many parents are less fortunate, the school their child or not, after that their fate has not changed.

Hybrid