Causes and Social Implications of Educational Inequities in Indonesia

Educational inequities in Indonesia has been existed for many years. Two major challenges with respect to educational inequities are access to and quality of education. Access to primary education is almost universal, while access to junior and senior secondary are still far from the government target. Let alone the tertiary education. The quality of education occurs at all levels of schooling. The twin problem of educational inequities is a major concern of the Governemnt of Indonesia (GoI). Over the past decade GoI has allocated 20 percent of its national budget towards education sector. GoI has made numerous attempts to overcome the inequity issue through, such as regulating the functional assignment between central and subnational governments in providing primary and secondary education, and issuing the minimun service standard for its implementation. Apparently these regulations were not prepared in a systemic and integrated fashion. This paper analyzes the causes and social implications of educational inequities in Indonesia. In terms of causes, this paper focuses on the socio-economic background, culture, and access to resources. While on social implications, it will cover four issues. The first two deals with the fact that educational inequities will increase inequality in income and competitive ability among individulas in labor markets. Thirdly, educational inequities will widen inequality of vertical social mobility chance among social strata. The more educated have higher probability to advance to higher social strata than those with lower level of education. This may give rise to social exclusion, which is the final impact to be discussed in this paper.