Ni Luh Nael, 13 - year-old, writes in a book while studying at Bali Street Mums and Kids shelter, after dropping out of school during the COVID - 19 pandemic in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia on September 10, 2021. JAKARTA DENPASAR, 17 Sept Reuters - Ni Kadek Suriani was looking forward to her second year of junior high school the last year before the Coronavirus pandemic hit. Then her parents lost their jobs and she was forced to help scratch a living on Bali's holiday island of Indonesia.
I had time selling tissue at traffic lights, the 13 year-old, wearing a black Metallica T-shirt, was recalled at the headquarters of local charity Bali Street Mums which now sponsors her studies.
Experts say a pandemic-induced shock has been devastating blow to many of the 68 million Indonesian students and closing of schools for more than a year has caused economic shock.
It also threatens to undermine Indonesian President Joko Widodo's plan to create a top-five global economy by 2045, driven by a skilled workforce.
Indonesia had a major learning crisis prior to the Pandemic and our model indicates that it has got much worse, Noah Yarrow, an education specialist at the World Bank and co-author of a report released on Friday, told Reuters.
Children are learning much less than they should in a competitive globalised economy. Highlighting Indonesia's shift from low to dreadful education outcomes, a World Bank report released on Friday calculated the pandemic will leave more than 80% of 15-year-olds below the minimum literacy level identified by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
That's a sharp rise from 70% of students who could not reach the basic literacy benchmark in testing by the OECD programme for International Student Assessment PISA in 2018, which put Indonesia in the bottom 8% of the 77 participating nations.
Despite going to school for more than 12 years, the average Indonesian student had effective learning for only 7.8 years, said the World Bank. That fell according to modelling by the Bank of July this year to 6.9 years.
A recent report estimated that the loss of learning during the pandemic would cost students at least $253 billion in lifetime earnings, according to the report.
It is a global phenomenon, not only in Indonesia, it said in a statement. We are currently encouraging schools to start a limited face-to-face learning so that kids will get back to school, interact with their teachers and friends and have their spirit of learning rebuilt. The Indonesian schools were closed for 55 weeks to August 4, compared with 25 weeks in Vietnam, 37 weeks in Japan and 57 weeks in the Philippines, according to World Bank data. Many schools remain closed in Indonesia, with the remaining open for limited hours.
With schools closed, Indonesia developed an emergency, simplified curriculum and adapted online lessons along with internet credits to help families defray the costs of distance learning. Educational television and radio programmes had augmented distance learning.
But the World Bank study found that, on average, students have learned only for 2.2 to 2.7 hours each day. Less than half of students were taking any online lessons, although more than 90% sent assignments via messaging apps from teachers.
Researchers and social workers told Reuters that assignments were often rudimentary at best.
Indonesia has patchy internet coverage but Florischa Ayu Tresnatri, a researcher at the Jakarta-based SMERU Institute, said access to online lessons was plagued by widespread connectivity. Many families added one basic smartphone, which is often needed by a parent for work, many families have.
Teacher absenteeism and the ongoing cost of school fees and supplies were other reasons for students struggling to learn or opting out altogether from classes during the pandemic, experts said.
Tresnatri said that the learning deficit was concerning for elementary school students, and the future prosperity of Indonesia.
Before Pandemic they were able to read a sentence but after the Pandemic they were tested on another sentence and they were not able to read, she said. There is also the same problem in writing. Indonesia has one of the youngest populations in the world. By 2035, 64% will be of working age, providing Indonesia with an economic advantage.
However many risk not being well educated enough to be part of the highly skilled workforce the Indonesian government wants for a modern and top-tier economy says Tresnatri.
The demographic dividend we used to boast about, it would turn out to be a demographic curse if we don't do something to mitigate this learning loss, she said.
In the last two decades, Indonesia has doubled education spending in real terms. Although there has been a rise in students continuing to secondary schools, there has been almost no improvement in the country's average PISA scores over the same period, the World Bank said in a 2020 study.
A skills certification programme doubled the salaries of teachers more than a decade ago but, according to Yarrow, there was absolutely no effect on student learning outcomes Almost 25% of teachers didn't turn up to lessons at any given day, according to a 2019 survey.
These fundamental problems need to be addressed by improving teacher training and recruitment, Yarrow said.
It's not just about recapturing what was lost during the Pandemic but also improving on learning outcomes pre-pandemic.