School Committee: an Implementation of School Based Management Policy at School Level in Indonesia By : Bambang Sumintono, Nora Mislan and Hamdan Said, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai 81310, Johor, Malaysia Abstract.The collapse of the New Order regime in 1998 made many significant changes to Indonesia. In the education sector ideas about school based management have become increasingly popular and public regarded as best solution to the school system. Four years later, Indonesian‟s ministry of national education released a decree which regulate school based management with the introduction of school committee that to be established at school level. Using qualitative inquiry, the researchers approached the study in two ways: document analysis of the decree regard to school committee issue; and collected data from schools and district level stakeholders in Mataram through questionnaire, interview, observation and document analysis to reveal their perception about school committee. It is found that the regulation apply „one size fits all‟ model regard to different type of education institutions in the school system; the schools follow the policy and establishing school committee, but still continuing earlier practices like previous body. Keyword : school committee; school based management; Indonesian education development; public secondary school Introduction Daun (2002, p. 75) states that policy of the educational decentr alisation “has become the most commonly implemented restructuring policy”. It can be identified in both developed and developing countries (Bulock and Thomas, 1997; Abu-Duhou, 1999; Fullan and Watson, 2000). This policy has been initiated by democratic governments, such as in Australia and the United States (Murphy and Beck, 1995), autocratic military regimes, such as in Argentina and Chile (Fiske, 1996, Schieffelbein and Schieffelbein, 2000), and even by a country with a rigid centralisation ideology like China (Hawkins, 2000). Then, school based management policy is a popular form of educational reform that practiced in many parts of the world. To make it as successful, the policy should take into account the real situations of schools, in particular the views and practices of educators. The researcher has published regard analysis of SBM policy in Indonesia (Sumintono, 2009) and thus this paper will discuss the practices and views of school stakeholders about school committee as implementation of school based management policy in Indonesia in state secondary schools in Mataram, Lombok, Nusa Tenggara Barat. It will consider the views of principals, teachers, and school committee members. The paper will firstly explore school based management issues as appeared in international scholarly publication, followed by