Education Minister: School Renovation Programme to Prioritise Severely Damaged Buildings

Minister of Primary and Secondary Education (Mendikdasmen) Abdul Mu’ti has said the renovation programme will prioritise schools suffering from severe damage.

The school renovation programme was previously announced by President Prabowo Subianto in his state address at the Annual Session of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) on Friday (14/8). Prabowo wants 100,000 schools to be renovated next year.

Mu’ti explained that renovations will be carried out on schools with moderate damage as well as schools in disadvantaged, frontier, and outermost (3T) regions.

“Across Indonesia, renovating severely damaged schools is our priority this year; later it will cover severely damaged, moderately damaged, and 3T schools,” said Mu’ti.

He said his ministry is still proposing an additional budget to the Ministry of Finance for the implementation of the programme in 2027.

“We are still requesting the Ministry of Finance for an additional budget in 2027. But for 2025 and 2026, which have already been agreed with the President, God willing, they can be completed so that later in 2027 we will strive to secure budget allocation for 100,000 educational units, hopefully,” he said.

On that occasion, he also explained that the government is building a studio to support learning through distance broadcasts, which Prabowo also mentioned in his speech.

The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education will also utilise the offices of technical implementation units (UPT) in the regions for the programme.

“A centralised studio, with our own teachers. So the centralised studio will be built in Jakarta; we used to have an educational TV studio in the past. We will use that studio again, renovate it, and improve it according to the needs for a studio as conveyed by the President earlier,” he said.