The educational decision makers and planners in Indonesia
have for a long time realized the lack of information
on educational quality.Many people are aware of the disparity in education, in the sense that there are differences in the qual1ty of education among the regions, and yet valid and reljable information
is difficult to obtain.
The definite answer to the questions concerning the
differences in educational envirOnment such as between the cities and districts is still unknown. And it is still a big question about what kind of variables could possibly influence and explain the quality of education in different
settings.
Objectives
The objectives of the study are:
(1) to identify the quality of education in various
educational environments;
(2) to find out the relationship between students'
achievement and a number of variables; and
(3) to study which aspects of curriculum are well mastered and which areas are poorly learned by the VI grade students of the elementary school.
These objectives which will be achieved through this
study, are aimed at helping educational planners, curriculum designers as well as experts who are interested in research in the field of educational sciences. The knowledge expected to be gained from this study, is also aimed at helping those who plan educational activities.
Instruments
Two kinds of instruments were constructed to achieve
the objectives of the study: (a) Achievement Tests and (b)Questionnaires. Four achievement tests were constructed to measure the achievement levels of VI grade primary school students in four areas of study; Mathematics, Bahasa Ir,donesia, Science and Social Studies. Questionnaires were designed for students, teachers, and headmasters to collect the information needed.
Sample
The country was devided into ten regions for sampling
procedures. Out of -2 360 wilayah population, 158
had been selected at random. Schools within a wilayah
were stratified according to type of school.
The study reported in this paper is carried out
through five different education environments, namely:
urban areas, rural areas, Jakarta Metropolitan City,
districts (Dati I & II), and sub-districts (Kecamatan/
Village). The student sample of this study is a national
sample covering 12 226 of VI grade primary schools.
Processing the Data
The data which had been collected are processed
by statistics relevant to research questions. Simple
descriptive statistics were used to identify the Percentage; Mean, Standard Deviation and Coefficient Correlation. Analysis of Variance and Multiple Regression
Analysis were used to deal with more complicated data.
Chi-Square was also used to identify any differences
which might possibly appear among students of other
educational environments in mastering the instructional
objectives.
Results
The result of the study shows significant differences
in student achievement between Jakarta Metropolitan
City, districts and sub districts/villages. There
are also differences among those students in mastering
the instructional objectives which are relevant not only
to students' intellectual aspects such as; recall of facts,
comprehension, application, synthesis and computation in
mathematics; but also to curriculum topics in Mathematics
and Bahasa Indonesia. The study also yields a close relationship between variance of students achievement with home, school, and other variables. It is clear that a number of variables play different roles in different educational environments.
Based on the results of this study, recommendations
have been put forward which might be of some help to educational planners, curriculum designers and also to scholars who are interested in the study of Social Sciences, especially in the filed of Education
