Students at SMA Taruna Nusantara, a prestigious boarding school in Magelang, Central Java, which has groomed many Indonesian professionals.- SMA TARUNA NUSANTARA/INSTAGRAM
JAKARTA: Business executive Kariyanto Hardjosoemarto helps his company to sell Mercedes Benz vehicles that can cost 12 billion rupiah (S$1.02 million) each in Jakarta, a far cry from his childhood on a farm in rural Magetan regency, some 600km to the east.
The son of a vegetable farmer and horse-cart driver attributed his success to his three years in SMA Taruna Nusantara, a prestigious boarding school located in Magelang, Central Java, that has groomed many Indonesian professionals since it opened in 1990.
The school – whose name means Teenagers of the Archipelago Senior High School, and is akin to upper secondary to pre-university levels in Singapore – is set to become even more prominent under President Prabowo Subianto.
The Prabowo administration is set to announce the construction of 20 schools modelled on Taruna – with four to be built in 2025 – as he seeks to groom Indonesia’s brightest from families with rural backgrounds, officials say.
It’s an aim Kariyanto, 47, can identify with.
“The senior high school years were the turning point in my life. The school, where I learnt about discipline and gained confidence, really laid down the foundations of my life,” said the sales and marketing director at PT Inchcape Indomobil Distribution Indonesia, the distributor of Mercedes-Benz in Indonesia.
“If I had not studied in Taruna Nusantara, I might have ended up as a farmer in my village like most of my friends.” Magetan is located in East Java province.
Upon graduation, young men and women who studied at this government-backed senior high school between the ages of 15 and 18 would typically enter Indonesia’s Akademi Militer, the country’s elite military academy, or top Indonesian universities, on the way to a bright future. In May 2024, a cohort of 326 graduated from the school.
Three Taruna alumni – Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, Prasetyo Hadi and Sugiono, who goes by one name – were named as members of Prabowo’s new Cabinet. Agus, a retired major, is the elder son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. A fourth Taruna alumnus, Sudaryono, who also uses one name, was made a deputy minister.
During the administrations of former presidents Joko Widodo and Yudhoyono, Taruna alumni only had roles as senior government officials.
Prabowo’s plan to construct the 20 schools modelled on Taruna is, needless to say, expected to be popular among rural communities across the archipelago of 17,000 islands and three time zones.
The programme would provide “equal access to education”, said Mr Fakhrul Fulvian, one of Prabowo’s economic advisers, aligning with the president’s goal of improving the quality of human capital.
“Equal opportunity is important. We want to make sure that our best talent can succeed,” he told The Straits Times.
The first four schools will be built in 2025 in Nusantara in East Kalimantan, East Nusa Tenggara, North Maluku and North Sulawesi – four provinces far away from the two most populous islands of Java and Sumatra.
John Dopong Tonung, a resident of Kupang, the provincial capital of East Nusa Tenggara, is excited about Mr Prabowo’s plan to develop a prestigious school in his region.
“There are only a few senior high schools of good quality in Kupang and only children of well-off families can enter,” said the 48-year-old father of three who works as a construction consultant.
“We really need an excellent school that can also accommodate the underprivileged.”
Each of the Taruna-styled schools is expected to cost 499 billion rupiah to build, according to the National Development Planning Ministry.
The Taruna school project aligns with Mr Prabowo’s other ambitious plans affecting rural areas, including providing free meals for up to 83 million people and setting up huge farms in remote South Papua province to promote food self-sufficiency.
Experts say that entry, as with Taruna, into the planned prestigious boarding schools will be tough. In a typical school year, Taruna admits just 360 students from as many as 8,000 applicants.
Taruna was started in 1990 by then President Suharto to educate Indonesia’s brightest. It was set up on land owned by the military academy in Magelang. Two other Taruna schools have since been built in Malang, East Java, and Cimahi, West Java. The Taruna schools have alumni of some 9,500 men and women.
A Taruna alumna, Dr Nanik Purwanti, 43, a food engineer, welcomes the plan to develop the schools with her alma mater as a benchmark.
The daughter of a farmer and cattle trader in Central Java’s rural Sukoharjo regency, some 550km east of Jakarta, grew up spreading fertiliser on her father’s padi fields. Today, she is a senior lecturer at IPB University, an agriculture university in West Java province.
“In such schools, students from less developed regions with lack of access to education may have a chance to meet figures who can become role models they cannot find in their own environment,” Dr Nanik told ST. - The Straits Times/ANN
