Toward Improving Education Quality: Indonesia’s promising path

Over the past few decades, Indonesia has made strong progress in improving education outcomes, with a particularly emphasis being placed on access to basic education in line with the government’s nine-year compulsory education policy. As in many other developing countries, moving beyond gains in education access and toward meaningful gains in education quality has been a greater challenge for Indonesia, however several notable positive trends have emerged. While the progress achieved specifically in terms of improving the quality of education remains a work in progress, several positive developments have emerged in recent years. Some of the key drivers of progress discussed in this report include strengthening the teaching force, reforming the curriculum and pedagogy, decentralization and school-based management, and increased budget and targeted support to address inequities. The diversity of reforms that have emerged and the use of research and evaluation to inform policy-making make Indonesia’s experience a particularly interesting case study with some useful lessons to offer. Published version (July 2014) of this paper can be accessed in http://www.odi.org/publications/8563-towards-better-education-quality-indonesias-promising-path.