The Ambition Behind the People's School

President Prabowo's policy, which has been deprogrammed to target the poor, consists of two initiatives. The first is the Free Nutritious Meal Program (MBG) and the second is the People's School Program. Currently, the People's School policy assumes that extremely poor children (deciles 1 and 2) need to be separated from their parents to break the cycle of poverty. Boarding schools are considered the solution.

At first glance, this idea seems truly noble. However, a similar situation occurred in Canada since 1830 and became a disaster a hundred years later.

In the Final Report of Canada’s Residential Report: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (2015), more than 3,200 mass graves of Indigenous Peoples in Canada (First Nations) were found behind residential schools or boarding schools. Various reports compiled up to 2024 reinforce the suspicion that students who experienced violence in the boarding schools built by the government for Indigenous Peoples subsequently died and were buried in these mass graves (Final Report, 2015; 2024).

The idea of boarding Indigenous people in Canada stems from a racist attitude that Indigenous communities need to become European. They need to be cultured and educated in a European manner. In 1830, the Catholic and Anglican Churches began establishing boarding schools for Indigenous children with the support of the colonial government. Subsequently, in 1876, the Indian Act was enacted, granting the Canadian government full control over the lives of Indigenous peoples, particularly in education.

In 1883, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald established a national residential school system in collaboration with the church. Eventually, in 1894, the Indian Act Amendment mandated that Indigenous children attend residential schools (legal compulsion). At least until the 1960s, around 139 boarding schools had been in operation.

As a result, thousands of children have experienced physical and sexual violence by the management of residential schools, coercion to use the English language, and prohibition from speaking in their mother tongue, as well as cultural harassment. They are forced to embrace a new religion, cut their traditional hair, and abandon their original identity.

Signs of violence in residential schools in Canada were actually reported by Dr. Peter H. Bryce in 1907 regarding the irregularities of children suffering from tuberculosis and hunger within the schools. This report was ignored by the government, which later became a ticking time bomb.

In general, the residency school model still exists today in boarding schools. The first aspect of this model pertains to control. Children in the dormitory are monitored 24 hours a day. They are supervised by caretakers in a structured manner both inside and outside the dormitory rooms. Thus, the hierarchy between the school administrators, who are adults, and the children, who are the subjects, is very apparent.

Secondly, they are generally separated from their parents. As a result, the unfair treatment they receive from adults becomes biased because they do not have companions who can protect them from the misconduct of the boarding school administrators, who are, by nature, adults with full authority. Thirdly, the closed nature of boarding schools narrows the emergence of a balanced pedagogical relationship that is equal, fair, and transparent between students and school administrators.

The results are not particularly surprising. Boarding school students have long been subjected to various forms of physical, mental, social, and even sexual violence, with minimal intervention.

In Indonesia, violence in dormitory-based educational institutions first gained national attention in 2007 when Clifford Muntu, a student of the Institute of Domestic Government (IPDN), died after being tortured by his seniors. The Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) recorded that out of 207 cases of violence throughout 2021, the majority occurred in boarding educational institutions, including boarding schools and Islamic boarding schools (KPAI, 2021).

Such violence is difficult to address because it has become a tradition with a chain that is very hard to break. The perpetrators are also victims from the past.

Being born into a poor family and environment indeed poses a barrier to access to quality education. The author has received complaints from teachers who work in densely populated and slum areas in urban settings, who find that children have declining learning achievements and rarely attend school.

After a home visit, it was found that the child lived in a rented room with dozens of occupants from three generations. The child slept in a cramped space with uncles and cousins. There was no place to study, and sleep disturbances were frequent. It is indeed true that in the presence of their extremely poor parents, the learning support at home can be very low, or even nonexistent.

Perhaps boarding schools could be a solution in cases like this. However, the question is, how many cases are there like this? What percentage of the likelihood is there that boarding schools will break the cycle of poverty and allow the child to focus on learning?

The issue is that the people's school policy has yet to be studied. Furthermore, there is no evidence that boarding schools, as a program, have successfully broken the cycle of poverty.

It is important to emphasize that children from extremely poor families do not receive quality education due to a lack of access. Therefore, in the student admission system in schools since the era of New Student Admission (PPDB), now called the New Student Admission System (SPMB), the government provides an affirmative pathway for those deemed less fortunate. This is a form of the state's commitment to the impoverished population.

However, the people's schools actually distance these students from regular schools, which have continuously been encouraged to become inclusive educational environments. The people's schools, which gather poor students in one location, certainly contradict the ideals of inclusive schools that can be accessed broadly by all children without exception.

So far, public schools have been required to accept all types of students, regardless of economic differences, physical abilities (disabilities), or variations in intelligence and skills. At the very least, this has been implemented, although it has not maximally impacted all public schools in Indonesia.

The government now plans to send those who are extremely poor to community schools. Those considered average will be sent to public schools, while those deemed to have Exceptional Intelligence and Special Talents (CIBI) will be provided with access to the Garuda Superior High School. It is not uncommon for these CIBI students to come from upper-middle-class backgrounds. As a result, a lower caste is formed in community schools, a middle caste in public schools, and an upper caste in the Garuda Superior School.

It is easy to assume that such a caste-based school system will affect the social sensitivity of our students because they are limited to a homogeneous social environment. In the Future Jobs 2025 document, it is stated that out of 26 core skills, social sensitivity ranks highest. Leadership and social influence (67 percent) rank third, while empathy and listening skills (50 percent) rank seventh (World Economic Forum, 2025).

However, among these castes, children who will eventually attend community schools will face the greatest challenges. The label of being poor children from community schools will stick with them for a lifetime.

The people's school program continues to be accelerated with a target of 1,000 children for 100 schools. It is planned that each boarding people's school will receive a budget of Rp 100 billion for each school. However, it is believed that a significant portion of the budget will be spent on preparing infrastructure before truly providing education at its best level.

The recent misfortune concerning the community school is that this school will be managed by the Ministry of Social Affairs. First, there is a high potential for corruption. Second, the Ministry does not have a reputation for managing boarding schools, including their curriculum, teacher recruitment, and overall governance. Third, how can we expect a ministry that has not succeeded in managing neglected children to take care of schools? Fourth, community schools are one of the government policies that inherit the tradition of policy-making without proper studies. This is what makes the community school program very concerning.

Furthermore, the only aspect that makes boarding schools consistently a model of education anticipated by a government characterized by strong control is the manner in which they are organized, which always promises compliance on a broader scale. Is this what our President hopes for?

Iman Zanatul Haeri History Teacher, Head of Advocacy for Teachers of the Indonesian Education and Teachers Association (P2G), Deputy Secretary General of the Indonesian Islamic School and Madrasa Association (Hisminu)