Promoting Access and Success for Disadvantaged Students in Indonesian Basic Education: Social Justice in Education

Introduction

Education is a means to develop students’ intellectual, social, and personal potential to their highest level (Bennett, 2003; Nieto & Bode, 2008). Therefore, school’s mission is to provide all students regardless of their race, ethnicity, social class, ability, and other human differences with an equitable, equal, and high-quality education (Nieto & Bode, 2008). From the functional point of view, providing such an education is central in order to have “a highly integrated, well-functioning society” and to maintain social order, social cohesion, and harmony in a modern and democratic society (Sadovnik, 2007, p. 4) by creating programs, structures, policies, practices, curriculum that are “technically advanced and rational and that encourage social unity” (Sadovnik, 2007, p. 4). Failure to provide accessible education for all students will confirm what the conflict theorists perceive that society is held together based on the ability of dominant groups to impose their will and values on subordinate groups through force, subordination, and manipulation (Sadovnik, 2007).

Indonesia having population of children around 85 million introduced twelve years of the universal education, targeting to facilitate equal access to education for children between 7-15 years old and all adolescents between 16 and 18 years old in 2016. Through its programs and policies, Indonesia has made improvements for children in basic education consisting of 6 years of primary education and 3 years of junior secondary education. The national primary school net enrollment rates have remained above 90 percent (Unesco Indonesia, 2016) and the national secondary school’s net enrollment rates of students tended to move up from 62.74 percent in 2008 to 76.81 percent in 2015 (Unesco Indonesia, 2016). In addition, Indonesia keeps increasing its budget on education since 2009. The national education budget reached 207 trillion Indonesian Rupiah [IDR] in order to reach the level of 20 percent of the total State Budget target mandated by Law Number 20 of 2003 of the National Education System (the Ministry of Finance, 2009 as cited in Jalal et al., 2009). However, although Indonesia has made improvements in the basic education and secondary education, one of the biggest problems is regarding the provision of equitable access and success for disadvantaged children aged between 7-15 years old in obtaining basic education with an acceptable quality in rural, urban, and remote areas. Many school age children across the country have not been able to complete their elementary school. The data show that around one million children between the ages of 7 to 15 years were not attending primary or junior secondary school. Almost 3.6 million adolescents aged 16 to 18 are also out of school due to several factors (Unicef Indonesia, 2018). Additionally, the data indicate that 2.7 million Indonesian children are estimated either as child labour or working children (Unicef Indonesia, 2018).