Online School Registration in Indonesia: Why Are Parents So Mad?

courtesy republika.co.id

Indonesia’s Ministry of National Education has used an online school registration system since 2009. Registration is free and allows applicants to view the flow of registration at their desired public school. This system sounds easy enough in theory, but in reality, there are still many people who have difficulty registering online.

On the website prospective students are asked to register and fill out a form, and new students will be informed whether they were accepted by the school. There is a series of steps, so the process is not exactly simple. This system currently applies to several areas in Indonesia, namely Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Palangkaraya, Salatiga, Gresik, Malang, Denpasar, and Metro Lampung.

The difficulty for the students and parents when completing the online registration (especially those from small cities in Indonesia) is that they are unfortunately not helped by the teachers from the schools and officers from the Education Department.

We tried it for ourselves

I myself tried to contact the call center of the School Online Registration Committee, but so far I have had no luck. When I contacted the Jakarta Education Office they didn’t have any answers either, but only told me to follow the instruction on the website and contact the designated school directly or visit the Department of Education.

I made a second attempt to contact The Ministry of Education, and they said the online registration is now under each region’s authority, so the rest was out of the Ministry’s scope of responsibility.

In the end it seems online registration is neither simple nor easy, but rather confusing and costly.

Registration steps

It’s About Accessibility

Jumono, chairman of the Alliance of Parents Concerned About Education (APPI) remarked (as quoted in The Jakarta Globe):

The authorities haven’t sufficiently informed parents about the online registration system… They haven’t taken into consideration the fact that most Indonesians aren’t familiar with the Internet.