JAKARTA: The Covid-19 pandemic shut schools across the archipelago of more than 17,000 islands and amplified inequality. But it also provided an impetus for a sweeping reform in Indonesia’s school system according to Education Minister Nadiem Makarim.

       As the country battled one of Asia’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks and schools remained closed, students in regions with little to no access to Internet and reliable electricity suffered the most.

       For the first time this year, his ministry is allocating funds to schools based on the poverty index, providing more funds to those in poorer regions than schools in metropolitan cities. It also launched a programme to send 30,000 university students to spend a semester in schools in remote regions to help teachers. More people will take part next year.

       “The silver lining in all of this is that reform has become accelerated greatly due to the pandemic,” Makarim, 37, said during the Bloomberg Equality Summit.

       “At the end of the day, it cannot just be a policy; It’s got to be a grassroots movement. That’s what we’re driving in.”

       Makarim – who founded ride-hailing company Gojek in 2010 – joined President Joko Widodo’s cabinet as education and culture minister in October 2019.

       In April, Widodo expanded Makarim’s responsibility by appointing him as minister for the newly merged Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology.

       His plan is to change the school system into one based on skills and competency, instead of only information.

       “The most important part of all is developing the growth mindset, the ability and the willingness for children to want to learn for the rest of their lives,” Makarim said.

       To that end, he has taken steps to replace testing in secondary education with school assessment based on numeracy, literacy and diversity values, which includes surveys on religious tolerance and gender equality. All data is digitised on cloud systems, making it one of the largest big data initiatives by the Indonesian government.

       He has encouraged companies and nonprofit groups to create off-campus programmes that count as university credits so students can spend up to one year of their four-year degrees on internships, working at startups, teaching or trying their hands at social entrepreneurship. — Bloomberg