Increasing Acces to Public Schools in Jakarta, Indonesia

The Provincial Government of DKI Jakarta has undertaken reforms to the New Student Admission (Penerimaan Peserta Didik Baru/PPDB) policy to improve more equitable access to public secondary education, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. These reforms respond to the gap between the capacity of public schools and the number of school-age children, as well as to previously limited access that relied heavily on merit-based academic selection.

Since the 2020 academic year, DKI Jakarta has begun implementing a zoning system as part of the non-merit criteria within PPDB. This policy aims to bring students closer to schools based on their domicile, while also creating affirmative pathways for students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The reform has increased the proportion of students from vulnerable groups admitted to public secondary schools, although challenges related to excess demand in certain zones persist.

To further expand capacity, in 2021–2022 the government introduced the PPDB Bersama program, which involves private vocational secondary schools (SMK) as part of publicly funded education access. This program significantly increased the participation of students from low-income households from 589 students in 2021 to 4,974 students in 2022 and raised the overall access rate to public and equivalent secondary education from 40% to 46%.

Evaluation findings indicate that the combination of the zoning policy and PPDB Bersama has been effective in improving equity in access to secondary education, particularly for disadvantaged students. Nevertheless, further efforts are needed to strengthen policy communication, refine zoning design, and increase school capacity to ensure the sustainability and fairness of the PPDB system going forward. In the long term, this policy vision aligns with the fulfillment of the right to inclusive and accessible basic and secondary education for all children in Indonesia.