While literacy rates have been steadily increasing in
Indonesia in the current millennium, digitization
presents a new future for education. Law no. 20 of
the National Education System, passed in 2003,
stipulates a nine-year compulsory basic education
(six years of primary and three years of junior
secondary education) for all citizens of Indonesia
aged 7-15years and has helped increase enrollment
in Indonesian schools1 . Furthermore, this law also
requires central and local governments to allocate a
minimum of twenty per cent of their budget to
education2 . This drastically improved school
enrollment of 15-year-olds in Indonesia from 46 per
cent in 2001 to 85 per cent in 2018 3 . However,
despite these efforts, according to the Central
Bureau of Statistics Report of 2015, an overall
estimated 4.4 million children and adolescents
aged 7–18 years are still out of school4 . As of an
Oxfam Report from 20175 , only 55 per cent of
children from poor families are enrolled in
secondary school, highlighting that these efforts
have still left out a significant number of young
Indonesians.
In parallel, there is increasing digitisation and
device availability across the archipelago. As the
internet becomes cheaper and more widely
available, giving more regular access, digital
education becomes increasingly pertinent and
advantageous to school-based learning. While
subjects involving information and communication
1 The World Bank, I ndonesia Public Expenditure Review: Spending for
Better Results, The World Bank Group, Ministry of Finance
Republic of Indonesia, European Union, Swiss Confederation and
Australian Government, 2020.
2 J asmina, T ., ‘ The Role of Government Spending on Basic
Education at the District Level in Indonesia’, 2007, p. 1-18.
3Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
Bridging the Digital Gender Divide: Include, Upskill, Innovate,, OECD,
2018.
4 UNICEF Indonesia, ‘ Education and adolescents’ ,
OXFAM
Briefing Paper, Kilimani, February 2017.
technology (ICT) first appeared in school syllabi in
2006, the internet itself has equally become the
means of delivering quality education opportunities
to millions of students across the country. Though
ICT was removed as a subject from the national
curriculum in 2014, the government, having realised
the importance of ICT, encouraged schools to
conduct education processes within an ‘ IT
environment’, allowing students in schools to use
computers and conduct online research inside the
classroom.
https://www.unicef.org/indonesia/education-and-adolescents>.
5 OXFAM International, ‘ Towards a more Equal Indonesia’,