Education in Indonesia

Pre-school education in Indonesia is covered under PAUD (Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini, lit. Early Age Education) that covers Taman Bermain (playgroup) and Taman Kanak-Kanak (kindergarten, abbreviated TK). PAUD is under direct supervision and coverage of Directorate of Early Age Education Development (Direktorat Pengembangan Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini).

From the age of 2, parents send their children to Taman Bermain. From the age of 4, they attend Taman Kanak-Kanak. Most TKs arrange the classes into two grades: A and B, which are informally called kelas nol kecil (little zero grade) and kelas nol besar (big zero grade) respectively. While this level of education is not compulsory, it is aimed to prepare children for primary schooling. Of the 49,000 kindergartens in Indonesia, 99.35% are privately operated.[9] The kindergarten years are usually divided into "Class A" and "Class B" with students spending a year in each class.

Indonesians are required to attend 12 years of school.[10] Students must go to school five days a week (some schools still employs 6 school days a week) from 07:30 a.m. (sometimes as early as 06.25 a.m. in some schools) until 15.30 p.m.[11]Students can choose between state-run, nonsectarian public schools supervised by the Ministry of National Education (Kemdiknas) or private or semi-private religious (usually Islamic) schools supervised and financed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs.[11] Students can choose to participate in extracurricular activities provided by the school such as sports, arts, or religious studies.[11] However, although 86.1 percent of the Indonesian population is registered as Muslim, according to the 2000 census only 15 percent of school-age individuals attended religious schools.[11] Overall enrollment figures are slightly higher for girls than boys and much higher in Java than the rest of Indonesia.[11]

A central goal of the national education system is to impart secular wisdom about the world and to instruct children in the principles of participation in the modern nation-state, its bureaucracies, and its moral and ideological foundations.[11] Beginning under Guided Democracy (1959–65) and strengthened in the New Order after 1975, a key feature of the national curriculum — was the case for other national institutions — has been instruction in the Pancasila.[11] Children age six and older learned by rote its five principles — belief in one God, humanitarianism, national unity, democracy, and social justice — and were instructed daily to apply the meanings of this key national symbol to their lives.[11] But with the end of the New Order in 1998 and the beginning of the campaign to decentralise the national government, provincial and district-level administrators obtained increasing autonomy in determining the content of schooling, and Pancasila began to play a diminishing role in the curriculum.[11]

A style of pedagogy prevails inside public-school classrooms that emphasises rote learning and deference to the authority of the teacher.[11] Although the youngest children are sometimes allowed to use their local language, by the third year of primary school nearly all instruction is conducted in Indonesian.[11] Teachers customarily do not ask questions of individual students; rather, a standard teaching technique is to narrate a historical event or to describe a mathematical problem, pausing at key junctures to allow the students to call out responses that "fill in the blanks".[11] By not identifying individual problems of students and retaining an emotionally distanced demeanor, teachers are said to show themselves to be patient, which is considered admirable.[11]

Children ages 6–12 attend primary school, called Sekolah Dasar (SD).[11] As of 2014, most elementary schools are government-operated public schools, accounting for 90.29% of all elementary schools in Indonesia.[12] Students spend six years in primary school, though some schools offer an accelerated learning program in which students who perform well can complete the level in five years.

Three years of junior high school (Sekolah Menengah Pertama, or SMP) follows elementary school.[11] Some schools offer an accelerated learning program in which students who perform well can complete the level in two years.

There are academic and vocational junior high schools that lead to senior-level diplomas. There are also "domestic science" junior high schools for girls.[11]

After completion, they may be attend three years of high school (Sekolah Menengah Atas or SMA). Some high schools offer an accelerated learning program so students who perform well can complete their level in two years. Besides high school, students can choose among 47 programmes of vocational and pre-professional high school (Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan or SMK), divided in the following fields: technology and engineering, health, arts, craft and tourism, information and communication technologies, agro-business and agro-technology, business management. Each requires three years of study.[13] At the senior high school level, three-year agricultural, veterinary, and forestry schools are open to students who have graduated from an academic junior high school.[11]

Special schools at the junior and senior levels teach hotel management, legal clerking, plastic arts, and music.[11]

Students with disabilities/special needs may opt to be enrolled in a separate school from the mainstream called Sekolah Luar Biasa (SLB, lit. Extraordinary School).[14]

The Indonesian education system is the fourth largest in the world with more than 50 million students, 3 million teachers, 300,000 schools.[15] Primary to high school level is compulsory.[15] Primary and middle school is free, while in high school, there are small fees.[15] The completion rate for Indonesian primary schools is high.[15] In 2018, the net enrollment rate for primary, middle school, and high school each is 93.5%, 78.84%, and 60.67%.[16][1] The tertiary-education participation is low at 36.31%.[1] In 2011, the survival rate for primary, middle, and high school as the following numbers: 95.3%, 97.68%, and 96.8%.[15] The higher the percentage of survival rate means that fewer students at certain education level who drop out. Although the Indonesian government has achieved significant improvement in the education sector, there are still many challenges that should be addressed, including funding, management, equity, and education quality.

Teacher-training programs are varied and gradually being upgraded. For example, in the 1950s anyone completing a teacher-training program at the junior high school level could obtain a teacher's certificate.[11] Since the 1970s, however, primary-school teachers have been required to have graduated from a senior high school for teachers, and teachers of higher grades have been required to have completed a university-level education course.[11] Remuneration for primary- and secondary-school teachers, although low, compares favourably with that in other Asian countries such as Malaysia, India, and Thailand.[11] The student–teacher ratio is 17 to 1 and 15.2 to 1, respectively, for primary and secondary schools in 2018; that same year, the overall averages for East Asia & Pacific countries were 17.5 to 1 and 14.8 to 1, respectively.[17][18]

By 2008, the staff shortage in Indonesia's schools was no longer as acute as in the 1980s, but serious difficulties remain, particularly in the areas of teacher salaries, teacher certification, and finding qualified personnel.[11] In many remote areas of the outer islands, in particular, there is a severe shortage of qualified teachers, and some villages have school buildings but no teachers, books, or supplies.[11] Providing textbooks and other school equipment to Indonesia's 37 million schoolchildren throughout the far-flung archipelago continues to be a significant problem as well, especially in more remote areas.[11]

Students in the dorm of a school of higher Islamic education, Bukittinggi, c. 1953

There are three types of Islamic schools in Indonesia, pesantren, madrasah, and sekolah islam. Pesantren can be small with just a few teachers and students to quite large with dozens of teachers and hundreds of students. Pesantren are led by hereditary kiais, who lead the school and have religious authority. Madrasah vary in their ideological foundations and vary in the provision of secular and religious content. Sekolah Islam use the Ministry of Education and Culture's secular curriculum and add their own Islamic curricula.[22]

The secular and nationalist emphasis in public schools has been resisted by some of the Muslim majority.[11] A distinct and vocal minority of these Muslims prefer to place their children in a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) or Islamic school.[11] Usually found in rural areas and directed by a Muslim scholar, pesantren are attended by young people seeking a detailed understanding of the Quran, the Arabic language, sharia, and Muslim traditions and history, as well as more modern subjects such as English, mathematics, and geography. Students can enter and leave the pesantren any time of the year, and the studies are not organized as a progression of courses leading to graduation.[11]

Although the chief aim of pesantren is to produce good Muslims, they do not share a single stance toward Islam or a position on secularism.[11] Some pesantren emphasise the autonomy of modern students to think for themselves and to interpret scripture and modern knowledge in a way that is consistent with the teachings of Islam.[11] Others are more traditional and stress the importance of following the wisdom of elders, including their teachings on science, religion, and family life.[11] Although the terrorist bombings in Kuta, Bali, in 2002 raised suspicions about whether pesantren promote extremist views, the majority of these schools in Indonesia are theologically moderate, reflecting the views of the Indonesian population as a whole.[11] For those who opt for a pesantren education, a sixth-grade equivalency certificate is available after successful completion of a state test.[11]

For students to adapt to life in the modern nation-state, in the 1970s the Muslim-dominated Department of Religion (now the Department of Religious Affairs) advocated the spread of a newer variety of Muslim school: the madrassa.[11] This kind of school integrates religious subjects from the pesantren with secular subjects from the Western-style public-education system.[11] Although in general the public believes that Islamic schools offer lower-quality education, among Islamic schools a madrassa is ranked lower than a pesantren.[11]

Madrasah Ibtidaiyah (MI) is the Islamic schooling alternative to SD, following a curriculum with more focus on Arabic and Islam. Madrasah Tsanawiyah (MTs) is the Islamic schooling equivalent of SMP. Madrasah Aliyah (MA) is the Islamic schooling equivalent of SMA while Madrasah Aliyah Kejuruan (MAK) is the equivalent of SMK.

• Indonesian National Academic Exam
• List of universities in Indonesia
• List of schools in Indonesia
• List of Indonesian schools abroad
• List of Indonesian agricultural universities and colleges

• (in English) World Bank data on education in Indonesia
• Vocational Education in Indonesia - UNESCO UNEVOC (2013)
• (in Dutch) Primary education in the Dutch East Indies
• Education in Indonesia, webdossier of the German Education Server