Our Expertise
This publication is only available in Bahasa Indonesia.
When President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo took office in 2014, Indonesia was facing stagnating poverty and high inequality. To address these problems, he quickly introduced several initiatives, mainly in the form of social assistance programmes which gave the poor access to education and health services, as well as food and cash transfers, and grants for villages as mandated by the Village Law.
An education system needs valid and objective information on student learning outcomes at a sufficiently disaggregated geographical level. Such data can inform policymakers on specific aspects in each geographical area that require attention and provide an indication of the returns to public investments in education. They are the starting point for any effort to improve the performance of an education system.
Since the launch of Indonesia's decentralization reforms in 2001, the country has achieved significant progress in improving the welfare of its citizens—as seen from increasing income per capita and decreasing poverty levels. However, vertical inequality has increased, raising concerns whether inequality between different parts of the country has also grown.
After successfully improving access to education in the early 1990s through virtually universal primary school completion and similar positive trends at the senior secondary level in 2005, Indonesia began investing heavily in improving learning outcomes. For almost a decade, the country has been spending about a fifth of its public funds on education.
