By: Regyta Nuraini*

At this time, the education gap between urban and rural areas is still not completely resolved. The main factor of this inequality problem is none other than access, facilities, and infrastructure that are far from reach. The difficulty of accessing the internet in some remote villages, for example, ideally makes children look for other alternatives to broaden their horizons, namely by reading books. However, returning to the original problem, the difficulty of accessing the village environment sometimes makes children's access to reading books cut off in the middle of the road.

This should not be a barrier to learning for village children. The intervention of village officials, parents, and education observers is very much needed to overcome this. Article 9 of Law (UU) Number 23 of 2014 concerning Regional Government states that education is a concurrent government affair, namely government affairs that are divided between the central and regional governments. This means that the authority for education affairs is not only the responsibility of the central government, but also local governments—education problems that occur in the regions can be resolved through the local government. In other words, the responsibility for education is not solely the responsibility of the central government. More broadly, basically educational affairs are also a shared responsibility: government, society, non-profit institutions, and so on. Unfortunately, the public has not fully realized and understood that the authority for education is divided between the central government and local governments.

If explored further, many village children's abilities are extraordinary but are not exposed to the outside world due to the lack of technology coverage and the difficulty of networking. Currently, elementary schools in urban areas are already using googledocs, gform and so on for teaching and learning activities, on the other hand, rural schools are still using a face-to-face system from teaching and learning activities to collecting assignments.

Until now, the stigma that rural communities are disadvantaged communities is still attached to people's minds. In fact, many parents flock to send their children to well-known schools in their neighborhood—which are often located very far away. Actually, from an individual perspective, it's good, which parent doesn't want their child to develop well. However, this cannot be achieved by all parents considering that the economy of each family is also different. So indirectly this is what makes the poor poorer.

Various efforts were made to empower rural communities, especially children, because after all, the continuation of the world is in their hands. Therefore, education, especially in villages, should be able to create an environment that is rich in experience and is humanistic in nature; flexible, so that it can meet the development needs of various abilities of different learners, especially those with superior abilities. This means that there needs to be an approach between teachers and students with student centered theory. Student centered is centered directly on students. So here it is hoped that students can explore more deeply what their interests are and further explore what their talents are. So the teacher cannot completely blame what the students have done. Later, the output given is that students become more creative and independent in solving problems but are still under the guidance of teachers and their parents.

However, the facts on the ground do not go as expected, there are even children and parents who still feel indifferent or do not care about education—even underestimate the issue of education. In fact, not infrequently we meet many village people who have the opinion that 'what's the point of going to high school, it's not necessarily a successful person'. This is what indirectly becomes the 'culture' of rural communities. Regarding this opinion, there are even many students who do not continue their education and prefer to work under the pretext of looking for certain things. Of course, it is not easy to build a broad mindset about the importance of education, or even a few who think school is just a formality.

Regarding the intricacies of education problems in the village, of course, quality improvement is needed, especially starting from small things: changing the mindset of the village community, especially children, regarding the importance of education for their future. Of course this is the first step. Once this is done well, the next step might be to focus on infrastructure. The most important factor in overcoming the problem of educational disparities in rural and urban areas is the teacher. By facilitating quality mentors, of course, it can give birth to quality education as well.

Education should be a priority scale for local government development agendas. Education development in the regions must be fair, participatory and integrated, so that the current quality gap can be overcome in the not too distant future. With the increase in the quality of education, it means that the human resources that are born will be of better quality and will be able to bring this nation to compete in a healthy manner in all fields in the international world. It is time to improve the quality of education in the village. (*)