School Zoning System

A. Brief Introduction.
Since 2017, Indonesian Ministry of Culture and Education created a new system for
students’ admission process called ‘School Zoning System (Zonasi)’. School zoning system
requires students to receive education at closest school within the area of the domiciles.
Despite its purpose as an alternative to overcome the inequality of school quality, this new
system has drawn objection from parents.

B. Ministry of Education PoV

Ministry of Education argues that school zoning system is a strategy to accelerate the
equalization of education quality in Indonesia.
1. The system will reduce or even eliminate the ‘classification’ or ‘caste’ occurred in
Indonesian education system. Ministry of Education argues that the classification
happened as the result of the students’ quality screening during the placement test on
the past admission process. To have an equal quality distribution it is necessary to
change the favoritism paradigm in education.
2. Equal development of infrastructure, redistribution, teacher, and student.
3. The system allows the local government to have actual data on school needs.
C. Parents PoV
The counter arguments from parents are;
1. The parents argue that the current system is unfair especially during the students’
selection and placement process. It is possible for students with higher grades to be
rejected by the school while students with lower grades are accepted since their homes
are closer.
2. The regulation is considered ineffective. Parents argue that there are many
opportunities for fraud during the administration process which requires them to
personally escort the process.
3. Quality of Schools are not even
4. The inequality distribution of school. Parents complained about the uneven access to
school since some regions do not have accessible school within the area. In Depok
some parents face the difficulty of finding the closest school in some area.
D. Infrastructure
In term of infrastructure,
1. The current situation of Indonesian school and teacher are considered inadequate in
order to implement the system. There’s an unequal distribution in terms of
infrastructure, facilities, and the quantity and quality of teachers among schools in
Indonesia.
2.
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