Universal Participation for Quality Education
Social media platforms are believed to be able to prevent children from falsifying their age.
Every time I visit a school and look inside a classroom, I see faces with a wide range of expressions. There are pupils who are cheerful and eager to follow the lessons. There are those who remain silent, and even some whose gaze seems hollow. Perhaps not all of them know why they attend school, why they learn, or where this educational journey will take them.
Yet we all harbour the same hope: that school will open the way to their future. That every child, without exception, has the opportunity to grow, discover their potential, and eventually become empowered individuals.
Within Indonesia’s great ambitions, they are the generation expected to become superior human resources — productive people who will help determine the face of Indonesia in 2045, a century after independence.
That hope is a moral dream and, of course, a constitutional mandate. Article 31 of the 1945 Constitution affirms that every citizen has the right to education. This means quality education is not an act of state benevolence, but a right that every Indonesian child must receive.
Herein lies the great responsibility that must be carried out. The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, together with regional governments and with the support of communities and the private sector, nurtures more than 53 million pupils studying in around 447,000 educational institutions. They are accompanied by nearly 4 million teachers and education personnel.
Seen as a whole, the primary and secondary education ecosystem involves around 57 million people. Within it are children with all their dreams, deeply dedicated teachers, parents entrusting their hopes, and a state bearing the responsibility of ensuring that education truly becomes a path towards a better future.
Indonesia is a vast, diverse nation that has never been simple to govern. Differences in geographical, socio-economic and cultural conditions mean quality education cannot be delivered through a single uniform approach. In one place, schools are still struggling to provide decent learning spaces. Elsewhere, teachers need broader opportunities to enhance their competence.
Many families also still face economic constraints in ensuring their children can remain in school. Given such complexity, there cannot be a single actor with a single formula capable of answering all of education’s problems.
The progress achieved is certainly something to be grateful for. The Nine-Year Compulsory Education programme has brought nearly all children aged 7–15 to school. However, that success does not mean our work is finished. Statistics Indonesia (BPS) estimates that around 2.9 million children aged 7–18 remain out of school. The largest number is in the 16–18 age group, the age at which they should be in secondary education.
Among them are children with disabilities, children from poor families, and children who for various circumstances could not continue their education after finishing junior secondary school or its equivalent. Some have never attended school at all. This fact reminds us that there are still Indonesian children who have not fully obtained their right to education as guaranteed by the constitution.
The next challenge, and perhaps the heavier one, is the quality of education. The PISA 2022 results show that Indonesian pupils’ reading, mathematics and science abilities remain far below the OECD average. The National Assessment paints a similar picture: many children attend school but do not yet fully receive a learning experience that enables them to develop optimally.
Bringing children to school is only half of education’s great task. The other half is ensuring that within school, they truly learn, feel safe and comfortable, and find their own path to developing their potential.
Therefore, the problems of education cannot be viewed from one side alone. We face schools whose infrastructure needs repair, teachers who need stronger competencies, vulnerable groups requiring affirmative support, families in need of assistance, and the need to harness technology to accelerate equity and improve the quality of education.
From all these challenges, one conclusion becomes ever clearer: Indonesian education is too great a task for the government to undertake alone. No single ministry can answer all of education’s needs from Sabang to Merauke. Nor can schools be left to struggle on their own to deliver quality learning in a safe, comfortable and empowering environment.
MUTUAL COOPERATION IS THE KEY
Fortunately, this nation possesses very strong social capital. The history of Indonesian education was built from the outset on the spirit of gotong royong, or mutual cooperation. Many schools were born from the initiatives of communities, religious organisations, educational figures, local groups and various parties who believed that education is the best way to build a nation.
Bung Hatta once said that society is an essential part of national development; schools were built collectively by the people, and therefore society must continue to be invited to take part in developing education. That message has not lost its relevance. Indeed, today, as educational challenges grow ever more complex, that call feels increasingly important.
The spirit of care continues to burn. We still see many community organisations, local groups, philanthropic bodies, businesses and industries, as well as individuals who wish to contribute to education. Some want to help with learning facilities, support teacher training, provide access to technology, offer scholarships, or strengthen services for children requiring special attention.
The obstacle is often not a lack of concern. What frequently happens is that goodwill does not always find the right path. Many parties wish to help but do not always know the most pressing needs on the ground. Meanwhile, schools and regions have real needs but do not always have a sufficiently clear channel to convey them to prospective partners.
This is where Partisipasi Semesta Pendidikan Bermutu (PSPB), or Universal Participation for Quality Education, comes in. Initiated by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, PSPB is designed to strengthen how we work together in education. Its aim is simple: to ensure that the various contributions emerging from society become more precisely targeted, better matched to needs, better coordinated, free of duplication, transparent, and of greater benefit to pupils, teachers and educational institutions.
Through Ministerial Regulation Number 3 of 2026, the government takes on the role of facilitator. PSPB brings educational needs together with various forms of community contribution through accountable governance. The government does not manage the assistance itself, but rather ensures there is a clearer, more transparent and trustworthy meeting space. In this way, the trust of all parties can be maintained, and every form of support is genuinely directed to those who need it most.
That meeting space is now facilitated through the Rumah Pendidikan super-app, in the Partners Room, accessible via pspb.pendidikan.go.id. There, schools can convey their needs more clearly. Regional governments obtain a better basis for mapping priorities and making decisions. Meanwhile, businesses, community organisations, local groups, philanthropic bodies and other partners can channel their contributions more precisely.
Thus, PSPB is not merely a collaboration programme. It is an effort to organise goodwill, to bring care together with need, and to ensure that the spirit of gotong royong truly produces change that is felt in the classroom.
In the end, education begins with the hopes we entrust to every child. Those hopes will stay alive when there are teachers who teach with all their heart, parents who accompany with love, communities that help look after them, and a government that continues to improve itself. If all that care can be brought together in a directed movement of mutual cooperation, quality education for all will no longer remain a mere aspiration. It will become a real experience felt by every child, every teacher and every school in this country.
The nation’s future is not built by a single policy. It is built by millions of people who choose to move together.