Current attempts to train school staff are by-in-large ineffective because of the following three main reasons:

• There is no special classification of School Technician (if there is - I have certainly not seen evidence of appointments being made in schools). In the rare instances where people are designated to technical work they are usually administrative staff (TU) and their appointment is unofficial. Furthermore, many of these people are not permanent public servants and are not eligeable to attend training courses so any information they receive is often second-hand from a non-technical person.

• The wrong people are being trained. Based upon my attendance at technician training workshops, follow-ups I have done on previously completed courses, and my personal school visitations, I have found that participants for courses have often been teachers or other staff who are not directly responsible for technical work. Based upon my attempts to inspire teachers to apply more time to developing student-active teaching materials I can say that they generally do not appear to have the time available to address technical problems. Because of the current teacher welfare situation (primarily low salaries) they usually have to maximize their time outside of school hours to earn a satisfactory living (cari makan). Their time for improvement to quality of teaching issues is already inadequate how can we possibly expect them to repair technical equipment (or effectively supervise and train another person). Most non-technical participants on these courses appear to view these training programs and the allowances they reseive as little more that supplements to their low incomes.

• The training is not "needs based" and is often too general to be effective. The courses are not based or focussed upon directly addressing the real "field needs". Any attempt to run short courses (1 - 2 weeks) for the purpose of training people with no technical or electronic background in how to maintain and repair language or computer laboratories without specific fucus of course content is ultimately going to fail. This problem is especially serious if the participants know that they will not be responsible for utilizing their new knowledge when they return to the field.

The official appointment of staff to technical positions in schools would greatly improve the current situation. However, unless the appointment is given some professional status ie. a career-path based upon service, successful completion of relevant training, and performance of duties, appointees will have no other options for advancement except to move out of this field of work. The need for school technicians is a serious issue and requires a serious approach to addressing it, especially with the planned increase in utilization of technology for senior secondary education in the year 2000 (ie. computer skills training, foreign language training, resourcing the Internet, etc.).

Based upon my personal observations, what tends to happen in schools currently is that relatively new (junior) administrative staff will sometimes be appointed to look after preparation and maintenance of laboratories. As they progress up through the public service system they are then moved into administrative roles (TU). For those people who aspire to laboratory work this usually occurs just as they are reaching some level of competency and a new unskilled person fills the position.

Most training is conducted in centralized training centres. Courses are often structured and managed by people who have never worked as a school technician and have little idea of their problems or real needs. As a result of this form of training the participants usually do not develop the skills or confidence necessary to be able to address the real problems in their own school.

The photos below show the results of 2 hours of focussed, needs based training. After just two hours of training and supervision this SMU technician (actually a TU staff member) was able to repair more than 90% of the faulty equipment in this school's language laboratory (a 1982/3 Tandberg System 500 laboratory).

The training and work was carried out utilizing an ordinary table, actual faulty equipment from the school's language laboratory, a soldering iron (can be purchased for about Rp 15,000) and a few basic hand tools. In the photos above the technician is repairing faulty hedphone cabling (certainly the most common fault in language laboratories).

In the photos above the technician is cannibalizing the large number of mechanically faulty headphone sets in order to immediately repair and return as many as possible to serviceable condition. The remaining headphones (awaitng spare parts) will be repaired when the spare parts are made by a local tradesperson (at a fraction of the cost of official spare parts). The technician can outsource this job utilizing one of the still servicable parts as a sample. A local tradesperson (tukang) will be able to replicate the items using local skills and resources. The product does not have to look exactly like the original, the important points are function and safety.

Most of the other faults in this particular language laboratory were in the student recorders. About 50% of them would not even run. However, upon an internal inspection of one of these units I found that the main problem was that they had not been used for several years (possibly ever) as there were no signs of wear on the tape heads, rollers, or internal mechanical components. In fact the quickest way to return them to operational service was to repeatedly fast-forward/rewind the units until they would continue to rewind and forward to the end of the cassette tapes. Some of the recorders still wouldn'd play at their correct speed but I found that all of the machines could be eventually returned to full service by repeatedly using this technique alone.

To my technical colleagues this approach may not sound very scientific however, it is incredibly time efficient, several machines were being repaired at the same time and we achieved an eventual success of 90%. As there are at least 500 of these language laboratories in Indonesia and very few (if any) skilled school technicians I believe that approaches like this are appropriate for disseminating to the many schools which probably have the same problems. Also, I have found that early successes achieved by trainees using approaches like this have had a significant positive affect on their motivation to learn more. Heavy technical (especially theoretical) introductions to maintenance have had exactly the opposite affect (to bore and de-motivate). Training founded upon "building practical competencies (successful experiences)" is certainly more affective than an "overwhelming knowledge based approach" in Indonesia. Of course training like this should be followed-up by a systematic theoretical and practical program.

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