This study is part of RISE Programme in Indonesia, a large scale, multi-country research program that seeks to understand how school systems in the developing world can overcome the learning crisis and deliver better learning for all. The study is one of the components in the Reform Area B that seeks to understand the spread of district education policies.

Regional autonomy provides space for local governments to innovate and produce more suitable and effective policies to address education problems in their regions. Many education policies that have been successfully implemented in one area are then applied in other areas. However, since education policies in one region aim to address education problems in that particular region, their application in other areas has shown mixed results. The spread of successful educational innovations has generally been accompanied by adapting the innovations to the local context—in practice, few local governments have implemented this step.

The processes of creating and disseminating educational innovations are crucial for improving the quality of the government. By deepening our understanding of the two processes, we can identify the factors influencing the success of an educational innovation or policy at the regional level. Moreover, an in-depth understanding of the processes of creating educational innovations and their dissemination can be useful in designing more effective dissemination.