The achievement gap in Indonesia? Organizational and ideological differences between private Islamic schools

Tatang Muttaqin,Rafael Wittek,Liesbet Heyse,Marijtje Van Duijn

doi:10.1080/09243453.2019.1644352

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study examines the effects of different types of private Islamic schools on student achievement and achievement gaps. We formulate hypotheses, drawing on an education production function approach that outlines differences in investment and resource allocation decisions across these tracks and streams. We tested our hypotheses using Indonesian data collected in 2013 on 156,952 students nested in 3,150 schools in 366 municipalities. Using multilevel regression analyses, we found that student achievement and achievement gaps vary over private Islamic school tracks and streams. Even though student achievement and achievement gaps are strongly determined by student and family characteristics, our findings suggest that differences between school tracks and streams also play an important role. Moreover, our study revealed a large variability in student achievement and achievement gaps between municipalities.

Highlights

The number of private secondary schools in Indonesia is growing
We focus on junior secondary schools (JSS) in 2013 for three reasons: (1) JSS are part of Indonesia’s compulsory education, which is a national education priority for several decades
We assessed the effects of various organizational and ideological in Indonesian private Islamic schools on students’ academic achievement and achievement gaps across gender and parental socioeconomic status (SES)

Summary

Introduction

The number of private secondary schools in Indonesia is growing. Almost 60% of Indonesian secondary schools are private in nature, as are more than half of junior secondary schools and almost 70% of senior secondary schools (Bappenas [Ministry of National Development Planning], 2015). In terms of investments in teachers, as mentioned above, the law requires that all teachers at the junior secondary level must have a 4-year post-secondary diploma or a bachelor’s degree in the relevant subject Fulfillment of this qualification in the integrationist stream is higher (76%) than in the traditionalist (71%) and modernist (70%) schools (MoEC, 2010), resulting in slight variations in knowledge and pedagogical skills, which might contribute to the variation in achievements across streams (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Three experts (Vice Chairman of Primary and Secondary Education Council of Muhammadiyah/modernist; Vice Chairman of LP Maarif NU/traditionalist, and the Chairman of JSIT/integrationist) were approached to elicit background information about each stream’s unique features as indicated by their vision and mission and how the schools incorporate the national curriculum, as well as issues such as the number of teaching hours, teacher training, teaching qualification, extra attention for specific subjects, investments in coordination, financial or other support for low-SES pupils, and implementation of single-sex classes. To investigate whether the model parameters are constant across school type and to test Hypotheses 3 and 4, within-level and cross-level interactions are added in a final step of which significant effects are retained

Results

English

Discussion and conclusion

Disclosure statement

Notes on contributors