Instructor Maternity Leave in Indonesia: What a Centre Owes, and Who Teaches the Class

How long is the leave, and what makes it six months?

The swim coach tells you she is due before the term ends, and she is the only person who teaches the Saturday beginners group. Her leave is at least three months and her job is held open throughout, so the question was never whether she goes. It is who takes that group for a term.

UU 4/2024 sets the leave at a minimum of three months, with up to three further months available only where a doctor certifies a special condition. That second block is not an option she selects. Pasal 4 defines the trigger narrowly, as a health problem or complication affecting the mother after delivery or miscarriage, or one affecting the baby.

So the planning number is three months and six is the contingency. Roster for three, and decide in advance what you would do if it became six.

Granting the leave is not a decision you make. Pasal 4 puts it as an obligation on the employer, so the conversation with her is about dates and handover, never about whether the centre can accommodate it this term.

The wage schedule, month by month

The wage obligation steps down rather than running flat, and the steps are in Pasal 5. Full wages for the first three months, full wages again for the fourth, then 75 per cent of wages for the fifth and sixth.

A standard three-month leave is therefore paid in full throughout. The reduction only appears on a leave already extended on medical grounds, and not until month five.

For a centre paying per session, the arithmetic is the part worth doing before you need it. Work out what her monthly wage actually is under your own arrangement, because that figure is what the percentage applies to.

A coach on a fixed monthly salary makes this trivial. A tentor whose pay moves with how many classes ran does not, and the method for arriving at a monthly figure is a question for a professional rather than something to settle by eye.

A separate entitlement catches centres out because it has nothing to do with a birth. Pasal 4 gives one and a half months of rest after a miscarriage, or whatever period a doctor, obstetrician or midwife certifies. It arrives with no notice, which is the strongest argument for a cover plan that is not built around one person's expected date.

The cover problem the law leaves you

Everything above is settled. Who stands in front of the class is not mentioned anywhere, and that is the part that decides whether you keep the enrollments.

In a graded class the instructor is the progression. She knows which child is about to pass a level, which one is coasting, and which parent needs telling before the recital rather than after it. Hand that class to someone with none of it and you have not covered the class, you have restarted it.

So the handover is a records problem before it is a hiring problem. Before she goes, get the per-child position written down somewhere that is not her head. That means current level, what each child is working towards, what was last said to the parent, and anything the family has asked for.

There are three cover shapes and they fail differently. Splitting her classes across existing staff keeps the quality and burns the goodwill of everyone who absorbs an extra Saturday.

Hiring a fixed-term replacement protects your existing staff and takes longest to get right, because you are recruiting for a known end date. Consolidating two thin classes into one keeps the teaching intact and means telling some parents their class time has moved, which is the option most centres reach for last and should consider first when both groups are small.

Pick the shape early enough that the choice is yours. A centre that waits until the final fortnight is choosing whichever option is still available.

Can you end the contract while she is on leave?

Pasal 5 is unambiguous on the direct version of this. A mother taking maternity or miscarriage leave cannot be dismissed over it and keeps her entitlements.

The question centres actually ask is narrower, and the law does not answer it. An instructor on a fixed-term contract whose term expires during the leave is in a position the statute does not expressly address. That is genuinely unsettled, and a centre reasoning its way to a comfortable answer is reasoning its way into a dispute.

What to do with that is not to pick a side. Put the specific arrangement in front of an employment lawyer or your labour office before a term expiry falls anywhere near a due date, and get the answer in writing. Our note on fixed-term instructor contracts covers how those terms are formed in the first place.

The contract clauses to write before anyone is pregnant

The law hands you one drafting instruction directly. Among the entitlements in Pasal 4 is adequate time where the child's best interests require it, and the official explanation to that provision says it is to be set out in the employment contract, company rules or collective agreement. Elastic by design, and yours to make concrete.

Write it while the question is abstract. Three things are worth fixing in advance.

How much notice you ask for, which you cannot enforce but will usually get if you have asked in writing. What the handover consists of, named as documents rather than as a conversation. And how an extension is evidenced, which is the doctor's certificate the statute already requires, so you are recording a procedure rather than inventing a condition.

What does not belong there is anything reducing the entitlement. A clause requiring her to use annual leave first, capping the leave below three months, or making return conditional is not a term you can rely on. These entitlements sit on top of whatever the contract says rather than being created by it, so a contract offering less than the statute loses on that point.

The version that holds up is dull. Restate the statutory position accurately, add your notice and handover procedure, then stop.

What does the law ask of the premises?

More than most small centres realise, and the answer is in Pasal 30 rather than in the leave provisions. Workplace support is listed as health service facilities, a lactation room, and childcare, and the same article states that support in that list is to be provided by the employer in accordance with the applicable rules.

There is a nearer-term obligation in the same theme. Pasal 4 entitles a returning mother to time and proper facilities for health, nutrition and lactation during working hours.

For a centre running classes that means a private space she can use and a gap in the timetable she can actually take. A room that is only free while she is teaching is not a facility.

What does a system hold, and what does it not?

The parts of this that software touches are narrow and worth naming precisely. Progress notes and recorded level achievements are where a handover either exists or does not.

A configurable level per instrument or dance style, with the teacher recording when a student reaches a new one, is the difference between briefing a replacement in an afternoon and reconstructing a term from memory. The progress record sits against each child and the class timetable sits in schedule management.

And that is the boundary. It does not compute what you owe her, does not track a leave entitlement or a wage percentage, does not produce anything you can file, and does not tell you whether a fixed-term contract may expire during a leave. Those are decisions for you and a professional, and a centre expecting a system to answer them will find the gap at the worst moment.

The sequence is short. Confirm the dates and write the handover list. Work out the monthly wage figure your percentages will apply to.

Choose the cover shape while all three are still available. Get the fixed-term question answered in writing if it applies.

Centres running graded classes will find the progression hardest to replace, so start there. On the early education side the per-child record does most of the work.

This is general information about employment obligations in Indonesia, not legal, tax or employment advice on any particular contract or arrangement. Take your own instructor's situation to a qualified professional before you act on it.