Perceptions of the programme
It was noted earlier that the Ministry documentation considers English to be a mere part of the initiative, and not the main focus, since the central aim is rather to raise educational standards to ‘international levels’. However, it was clear from my observations, and my interviews with many stakeholders, that almost everyone in practice considers English to be the main focus of the whole programme.This may derive from the fact that, as Coleman notes (2009:19), throughout the Ministry documentation there are references to English, and this might lead to the idea that the centre of the project is English. It is certainly clear from interviews which I conducted with all stakeholders that English and a generally bilingual approach is seen as the main aim of the project. A good illustration of how firmly certain misconceptions about the project have taken hold is a newspaper article written for the Jakarta Post (24/2/2007) by Richel Dursin entitled ‘English policy does more harm than good’ which assumes that the Ministry policy is aiming strictly at English only classes and will undermine Indonesian language and culture.