ABSTRACT
Both the Portuguese and Indonesian regimes used education to instil their own language and culture in East Timorese students. The national curriculum of each country was taught regardless of relevance. Education was characterised by high repetition and drop-out rates, low academic standards and poorly qualified teachers. Students had to rote learn material copied from the blackboard.
However, there were differences. By 1999 all school-age students had access to education from kindergarten to tertiary level and thousands of teachers had been trained. There was a primary school in almost every village. In 1976 literacy was estimated to be 5 percent, whereas in 1999 it was estimated to be 50 percent. From the late 1960s a handful of Timorese elite gained tertiary scholarships to study in Portugal, whereas hundreds of Timorese attended Indonesian tertiary institutions. Yet, none of this made the Timorese grateful to the Indonesians.
The conflagration that followed the announcement of the August 1999 referendum results was payback, orchestrated from Jakarta to return East Timor to the conditions of 1976. Once again, the education sector had to be rebuilt from scratch.
