Can Indonesia's Education Be Considered Advanced?

Indonesia has allocated an education budget of Rp757.8 trillion for 2026, or about 20 percent of the total state budget (APBN). The figure shows that education is placed as one of the priorities of national development. However, the size of the budget does not automatically make Indonesia’s education system advanced.

The question of whether Indonesian education has progressed becomes increasingly important when compared with the quality of learning outcomes. In PISA 2022, Indonesian students obtained an average score of 366 for mathematics, 359 for reading, and 383 for science. All were below the OECD country averages of 472, 476, and 485 respectively. Only 18 percent of Indonesian students achieved at least Level 2 in mathematics, compared with the OECD average of 69 percent.

Such data cannot be used as the sole measure of whether a country’s education is advanced. Education has far broader dimensions: access, equity, teacher quality, infrastructure, curriculum, character, critical thinking skills, and relevance to the needs of society and the world of work.

However, if advanced education is defined as a system capable of ensuring children receive a decent learning opportunity while producing strong academic abilities and skills, Indonesia still has substantial homework to do.

In other words, Indonesian education has developed, but it cannot yet be fully called advanced.

Access to education has increased, but quality remains uneven. One indicator of educational progress is a country’s ability to provide broad access for its people. Indonesia has experienced development in this aspect. The government runs various education assistance programmes and expands the construction of educational units in various regions.

The 2026 education budget, for example, includes various programmes for students, university students, educators, and facilities and infrastructure. The government has allocated Rp15.5 trillion for the Indonesia Pintar Programme (Smart Indonesia Programme) aimed at 21.1 million primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary school students. In higher education, KIP Kuliah and Bidikmisi have been allocated Rp17.2 trillion for around 1.2 million university students.

However, the problem of Indonesian education is not simply how many children enter school. The more important question is what they receive while they are at school.

Statistics Indonesia (BPS), through the 2025 Education Statistics, shows that the condition of education needs to be viewed from various indicators, including the number of schools, the condition of classrooms, sanitation, teachers, and educational attainment collected through the March 2025 Susenas and school registration for the 2024/2025 academic year. The data is available down to provincial level, showing that the problems of Indonesian education cannot be separated from differences in conditions between regions.

This is where Indonesia’s major problem as an archipelagic country lies. Schools in city centres with internet access, laboratories, libraries, relatively complete teaching staff, and a supportive learning environment certainly face different conditions from schools in remote areas.

Advanced education should not only produce excellent schools in big cities. Progress must be felt by students in various regions.

The biggest problem lies in the quality of learning. If access is the entry point to education, then the quality of learning determines what happens after students are inside the system.

PISA 2022 provides a fairly serious picture. Indonesia’s average mathematics score was only 366, while the OECD average reached 472. In reading, Indonesia obtained 359 compared with 476, while science stood at 383 compared with 485. In fact, Indonesia’s 2022 results were among the lowest throughout its participation in PISA in all three areas.

These figures do not mean Indonesian students are unintelligent. PISA measures the ability to apply knowledge to deal with real-life problems, not merely the ability to memorise subject matter.

This is precisely the challenge.

An advanced education system must be able to make students understand why a concept is important, not just what answer should be written during an exam. Students need to be trained to read information, process data, solve problems, test arguments, work together, and make decisions based on evidence.

OECD data shows that only 18 percent of Indonesian students achieved Level 2 or above in mathematics. At that level, students at least begin to be able to recognise and use mathematics in simple situations without direct instruction. In contrast, the OECD average reached 69 percent.

This condition shows that Indonesia’s challenge is not simply increasing graduation rates or building more schools. The country needs to ensure that each year of education truly produces an increase in learning ability.

The role of teachers is very important in this matter. A good curriculum will not produce quality learning if teachers do not receive adequate support, training, resources, and working conditions.

Therefore, education reform should not stop at curriculum changes. More fundamental changes are needed in the way teachers teach, the way students learn, and the way educational success is measured.

Advanced education must produce fairer opportunities. There is one other measure that is often forgotten: educational equity.

Education is called advanced not only because it has renowned universities or schools with modern facilities. Education must also be able to prevent a person’s economic conditions and place of residence from determining their future too greatly.

The OECD notes that 43 percent of Indonesian students who took PISA 2022 were in the bottom 20 percent based on the socio-economic index on an international scale. At the same time, Indonesia has differences in achievement…