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.

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.”