“Pandemic to take big toll on students' test scores, learning,

future earnings: Studies”

Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman

The Jakarta Post

Jakarta / Tue, March 23, 2021 / 08:30 am

Link Berita : https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2021/03/22/pandemic-to-take-big-toll-on-

students-test-scores-learning-future-earnings-studies.html

Two children watch digital learning videos from home in Bandung, West Java, on March 17,
2020. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo stressed that policies for work, study and worship at
home needed to be implemented to reduce the spread of COVID-19. (Antara/M Agung Rajasa).

Tens of thousands of Indonesian students have dropped out of school, may see their
international test scores drop by double-digits and are likely to lose hundreds of dollars in future
earnings as mobility restrictions and the economic crunch hits educational activities, several
studies have found.
 With the pandemic hitting household finances, it is estimated that 43,031 children at the
elementary school level and 48,175 children at the secondary level were forced to abandon their
studies in the first four months of campus closures, mainly because their parents needed them to
support the family’s income, according to a World Bank study published in August last year.

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reading

score is estimated to drop by 11 points to 360 after the pandemic from 371 in the latest
assessment in 2018, according to the same study. Reading was the main subject assessed in the
2018 PISA.

“This is important because as we know from international studies and from Indonesian
studies that children exposed to early childhood education perform better over the whole
education cycle,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economist
Andrea Goldstein said on March 18, quoting the bank’s study during a virtual press conference.

He added that while Indonesia had shown improvements in terms of access to education,
the country still needed to further develop its quality of education.

During the pandemic, almost half of the Indonesian students that dropped out of school
did so to find work and help their family make ends meet as the parents’ incomes shrank amid
soaring job losses and business closures, according to the World Bank. Many parents also
struggled to keep up with school-related payments.

The study also projected a US$249 loss in students’ future annual earnings as the
learning-adjusted years of schooling fell, due to the first four months of school closure, which
was estimated to lower their earnings to $5,534.

Furthermore, Indonesian students faced a myriad of hurdles in studying online, including

a lack of internet-capable devices, poor internet connectivity and regular electricity blackouts,
particularly in remote regions.

Only 5 percent of household respondents reported having internet connectivity at home,

both in rural and urban areas, according to a separate World Bank survey covering 350 primary
schools, 1,838 teachers and 3,368 Grade 4 students in 2019. The survey was published in
November last year.
A high school teacher (right) distributes a graduation letter to a student at her home in Borong,
East Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara, on May 5. Teachers and principals of schools in Borong
traveled to each of their student’s house to hand-deliver their graduation letter and also
discourage mass gatherings. JP / Markus Makur (JP/Markus Makur).

After ordering schools to close their campuses and shift to online learning in March of
last year, the government plans to reopen all schools for the new academic in July, but parents
and experts have expressed their concerns over the plan.

However, prolonged online learning has also sparked concerns, with three out of four
parents saying they were worried their children would fall behind in learning, according to a
survey involving 12,216 households between October and November 2020 by the SMERU
Research Institute, the United Nations and the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Economic
Development (PROSPERA).

SMERU reported that around one-fourth of surveyed parents said they either did not have
enough time or the skills to assist their children in learning from home.

“School closure, social isolation and economic uncertainty expose children to other
risks,” reads the report.

“This survey found that 45 percent of the [surveyed] households said they experienced
behavioral challenge from their children. Of those, 20.5 percent said their children had difficulty
concentrating on their studies.”