The statistic depicts the literacy rate in Indonesia from 2008 to 2020. The literacy rate measures the percentage of people aged 15 and above who can read and write. In 2020, Indonesia's literacy rate was around 96 percent.

In 2023, the literacy rate among Indonesians between the ages 15 and 19 years old was 99.87 percent. The literacy rate in urban areas is higher across all age groups compared to the literacy rate in rural areas.

In 2023, Papua province had the lowest literacy rate of population above 15 years old in Indonesia, at around 84 percent. For decades, Indonesia had been focusing its development more on Java Islands. However, since 2002, Indonesian government has started special funds for Papua to support its development. Despite the extensive financial assistance, Papua’s development growth remains low.

In 2024, Indonesia's financial literacy index was around 65.43 percent. Although the index has been increasing since 2013, the national financial literacy index was still considerably low and indicates that there was still a substantial portion of the population who does not understand financial service providers, their products, features, advantages, and risks, which hinders the development of Open Finances. This index consists of a survey to assess the level of knowledge, skills, confidence, attitudes, and behavior related to financial services and products.

As of 2023, teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 living in urban areas in Indonesia had a literacy rate of 99.95 percent. In Indonesia, the urban literacy rates were higher than the national literacy rates across all age groups.

According to a survey in 2022, Indonesia's digital literacy index score increased from 3.46 in 2020 to 3.54 in 2022. Overall, Indonesia's digital skills and digital culture had improved, while digital ethics and digital safety in the archipelago had weaken. This means that Indonesians takes the feelings of readers from different ethnicity/religion/political views more into account and they are better in double-checking information from the internet compared to the previous year. However, Indonesian internet users have become less sensitive about posting content without permission and less aware of the importance of protecting personal information.

Introduction: Health literacy on COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination is valuable during the pandemic. The objective of this study was to determine the levels of health literacy about the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination (Vaccine and Vaccination literacy—VL) in the Indonesian adult general population, assessing the perceptions of the respondents/interviewees about current adult immunization and beliefs about vaccination in general, and analyzing correlations of these variables with the VL levels.

Methods: A rapid survey was administered via the web. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential stats; the internal consistency of the VL scales was assessed through Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted to investigate how the questions of the functional and interactive-critical VL scales were related to one another and whether the underlying components (factors) and each question's load on the components could be identified as anticipated. An alpha level lesser than 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: Answers to functional- and interactive/ critical- VL questions showed good/ acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.817 and 0.699, respectively), lowest values observed were 0.806 for functional scale and 0.640 for the interactive-critical scale. PCA showed two components accounting for 52.45% of the total variability. Approximately 60% of respondents were females (n=686). Almost all respondents used the internet to seek information regarding COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination. Many used at least one social media actively with 74.4% of respondents sometimes believing the validity of this information.

Conclusions: High scores were observed in both functional- and interactive/ critical-VL, and were quite balanced between genders in the prior VL and higher in females for the latter; these were also closely related to the educational level and age group. It is crucial to increase public health literacy on managing the pandemic.

In 2022, the literacy rate on insurance among Indonesians reached around 31.72 percent, showing a significant increase compared to 2019. In the same year, Indonesia's overall financial literacy index was about 49.7 percent.

In 2023, the illiteracy rate among citizens aged 15 years and above in Indonesia stood at 3.47 percent. The adult illiteracy rate refers to the percentage of the population aged 15 years and older who cannot read and write.

According to a survey on the state of digital literacy in 2022, DI Yogyakarta has the highest digital literacy Index score among other provinces in Indonesia with 3.64 points. The same survey found that Indonesia's digital literacy index score increased from 3.46 in 2020 to 3.54 in 2022.

In 2023, approximately 69.54 percent of the female population who attended school in Indonesia completed their senior high school, slightly higher than the male population. The education completion rate in Indonesia decreases as the education level gets higher.

According to a 2022 survey, the digital literacy index score in Indonesia's education sector was 3.7. Among all the digital literacy pillars, digital safety scored the lowest. This indicated that students and educators in Indonesia were less aware of the importance of protecting personal information and other cyber security practices. However, Indonesia's education sector had a generally higher score than the overall population's digital literacy index.

Disparities in access and infrastructure

Digital literacy measures the skills and proficiency in utilizing digital platforms or devices to find, manage, evaluate, and communicate information. It plays a critical role in Indonesia’s education landscape, as the country aims for digital transformation in this sector. Infrastructure and resources are among the main obstacles to fostering digital literacy in schools. A 2022 survey showed that around 81 percent of the Indonesian population claimed that unreliable network resulting in frequent connection loss was their primary issue in accessing the internet. Furthermore, a significant gap was still found between internet access in different areas. In 2022, around 82.4 percent of students in Indonesia's urban areas had access to the internet, compared to only 68.9 percent of students in rural areas.

 Digital literacy to combat misinformation  

Along with the widespread adoption of social media and online platforms, misinformation is still commonly found in Indonesia. Most Indonesians use social media as their primary source of information consumption. Meanwhile, it was revealed that social media ranked first as the online platform that served the most hoaxes and false information. This emphasizes the pressing need to improve the current level of digital literacy among students and educators across the country.

In 2023, around 4.7 percent of Indonesians with disability aged 15 and up completed their university education. On the other hand, around 16 percent of Indonesians with disability never went to school.

In 2024, Indonesia's financial inclusion index was around 75 percent. The same survey found that the financial literacy index of the country reached about 65 percent. This indicates financial services are widely used, but are not complemented by adequate financial literacy.

In 2023, the enrollment rate in elementary school levels in Indonesia slightly decreased compared to the previous year, at 105.62. The enrollment rate at the high school level showed an increase of about 0.85 percent compared to 2022, at 86.34 percent.

In 2023, approximately 0.65 percent of women in Indonesia who were between seven and 24 years old have never attended school. In comparison, around 0.74 percent of Indonesian men in the same age range never went to school.

As of 2022, there were 838 active private universities with religious affiliation in Indonesia. Overall, the number of private universities with religious affiliation in the country has been increasing over the past decade.

In the 2023/2024 school year, there were approximately 355 thousand active senior high school teachers in Indonesia. East, Central and West Java have the most teachers, as they have the most students compared to other provinces in Indonesia.

In the third quarter of 2023, Indonesian internet users spent an average of one hour and 26 minutes per day reading online and print media. In the same year, the average daily time spent using the internet among Indonesians stood at seven hours and 38 minutes.

In 2022, there were around 183,710 lecturers in private universities in Indonesia. Private universities in Indonesia operate on budgets that are almost entirely tuition-fee driven, and students get limited, if any, financial support from the government to attend such universities. In the same year, around 4.5 million students were enrolled in private universities in Indonesia.