Indonesia

Indonesia, like many middle income countries, has difficulty providing universal access to education and adequate access to healthcare, particularly in poor and rural areas. To tackle these problems, the Government of Indonesia launched two large-scale programs in 2007. The programs both relied on cash transfers, but one targeted households and one targeted communities.

This brief summarizes about did social safety net scholarships reduce drop-out rates during the Indonesian economic crisis for the period 1998-1999 school year. This paper uses regression and matching techniques to evaluate Indonesia's Social Safety Net Scholarships Program. The scholarships program was developed to try and prevent large numbers of children from dropping out of school as a result of the Asian crisis. The expectation was that many families would find it difficult to keep their children in school and dropout rates would be high like they were during the 1980's recession.

Primary enrollment rates in Indonesia are near 100 percent for all students, but students from poor and vulnerable households have a difficult time completing higher levels of education. Poor households most often have heads of households with primary school education or lower while rates of illiteracy among households below the poverty line are approximately double that of non poor households.

This paper estimates average and marginal returns to schooling in Indonesia using a non-parametric selection model estimated by local instrumental variables, and data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. The analysis finds that the return to upper secondary schooling varies widely across individual: it can be as high as 50 percent per year of schooling for those very likely to enroll in upper secondary schooling, or as low as -10 percent for those very unlikely to do so.

Indonesia has shown an increasing commitment to education over the last decade. Since 2001, spending has doubled in real terms largely as a result of a constitutional requirement obligating the government to spend a fifth of its budget on education. A cornerstone of this increased investment has been a school grants program aimed at providing financial support to all public, private and religious primary and junior secondary schools.

In the last five years, the Government of Indonesia has successfully expanded access to higher education through various programs, as demonstrated by a significant increase in the gross enrolment rate (GER), from 21.3 percent in 2008 to 27.1 percent in 2011. In spite of the significant achievement in increasing the enrolment rate, the issue of disparity still needs to be properly addressed.

This brief has provided a basic profile of child marriage inIndonesia. The share of women ages 18-22 who marriedas children is 16.2 percent. It has declined substantially over time. The share of girls marrying very early, beforethe age of 15, has also declined. Child marriage isassociated with lower wealth, lower education levels, and lower labor force participation. These are however only correlations, not necessarily causal effects. Other briefs inthis series look at potential causal effects.

PISA is the OECD's benchmarking tool to assess achievement and application of key knowledge and skills of 15 year-olds. Launched in 2000, PISA is conducted every three years and tests proficiency in mathematics, reading, science, and problem-solving. In 2015, 540,000 students completed the assessment, representing 29 million 15-year-olds in the schools of the 72 participating countries and economies.

This paper presents evidence on the cost-effectiveness of early childhood education pathways in rural Indonesia. It documents the existence of substantial differences in school readiness between 6 to 9 year old children. Using detailed enrollment histories, it unpacks whether and how early education experiences explain these gaps. The analysis considers not only the sequence of services children enroll in, but also the age at which they enroll and the duration for which they enroll.