In 2021, the population density in Indonesia was at about 144.65 people per square kilometer. Despite being the fourth largest country in the world in terms of population, Indonesia’s population density is mitigated by its abundance of land – Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17 thousand islands sprawled across more than five thousand kilometers from east to west. Java as the heart of Indonesia Despite the many thousands of islands, Indonesia’s population, politics, and economy are mostly centered on the island of Java. This is where its capital, Jakarta, is located. With a population of around 36.3 million in 2015, Jakarta is not only Indonesia’s biggest city, it is also one of the world’s most-populated urban areas. The number of inhabitants in Jakarta increased three-fold since 1975, reflecting a trend of rural-urban migration in Indonesia. Urban-rural dichotomy Indonesia’s rural population had been steadily decreasing in the last ten years; inversely, its urban population saw a steady increase. As of 2021, more than 57 percent of the Indonesian population were living in urban areas. In Indonesia, the economic opportunities are mostly concentrated in the larger and more densely populated islands such as Java and Bali, and smaller, rural, and more far-flung islands such as the Maluku Islands tend to suffer from a lack of easy connectivity to these economic centers. It comes as no surprise that these rural areas had the highest share of the rural population living below the poverty line. With their lack of economic prospects, rural populations in Indonesia also had a significantly higher share of those living below the poverty line than urban populations.

Abstract

This survey is the first detailed study on the phenomena of teacher absenteeism in Indonesia obtained from two unannounced visits to 147 sample schools in October 2002 and March 2003. The study was conducted by the SMERU Research Institute and the World Bank, affiliated with the Global Development Network (GDN). Similar surveys were carried out at the same time in seven other developing countries: Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Uganda, and Zambia.

This research focuses on primary school teacher absence rates and their relations to individual teacher characteristics, conditions of the community and its institutions, and the education policy at various levels of authority. A teacher was considered as absent if at the time of the visit the researcher could not find the sample teacher in the school.

This survey was conducted in randomly selected 10 districts/cities in four Indonesian regions: Java-Bali, Sumatera, Kalimantan-Sulawesi, and Nusa Tenggara.

Geographic coverage

Java-Bali, Sumatera, Kalimantan-Sulawesi and Nusa Tenggara regions

Analysis unit

• Teachers
• Schools

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Information from Indonesian Statistics Agency (BPS) and the Ministry of Education was used as a basis to build a sample frame. The data gathered included the amount of total population, a list of villages and primary school facilities in each district/city. Due to limited time and resources, this research only focused on primary schools. In Indonesia, there are two types of primary education facilities: primary schools and primary madrasah. Primary schools are regulated by the Ministry of National Education, using the general curriculum, while primary madrasah are regulated by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, using a mixed (general and Islamic) curriculum.

A sample of districts/cities and schools (consisting of primary schools and primary madrasah) were selected using the following steps. First, Indonesia was divided into several regions based on the number of total population: Java-Bali, Sumatera, Kalimantan-Sulawesi, and Nusa Tenggara. Indonesian provinces that were suffering from various conflicts (such as Aceh, Central Sulawesi, Maluku, North Maluku, and Papua) were removed from the sample selection process. Then, from each region, a total of five districts and cities were randomly selected, taking into account the population of each district/city.

Second, 12 schools were selected in each district/city. Before choosing sampled schools, researchers randomly selected 10 villages in each district/city to be sampled, taking into account the location of these villages (in urban or rural areas). One of the 10 villages was a backup village to anticipate the possibility of a village that was too difficult to reach. In each village sampled, researchers asked residents about the location of primary schools/madrasah (both public and private) in these villages. They started visiting schools, giving priority to public primary schools/madrasahs. To meet the number of samples in each district/city, additional samples were selected from private schools.

Third, in each school sampled, the researcher would request a list of teachers. If a school visited was considered to be large, such as schools with more than 15 teachers, then the researcher would only interview 15 teachers chosen randomly to ensure that survey quality could be maintained despite the limited time and resources. Each school was visited twice, both on an unannounced date. From the 147 primary schools/madrasah in the sample, 1,441 teachers were selected in each visit (because this is a panel study, the teacher absence data that were used were taken only from teachers that could be interviewed or whose data were obtained from both visits). If there were teachers whose information was only obtained from one of the visits, then their data was not included in the dataset panel.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The following survey instruments are available:

• Teacher Questionnaire, First Visit
• Teacher Questionnaire, Second Visit.

Cleaning operations

Detailed information about data editing procedures is available in "Data Cleaning Guide for PETS/QSDS Surveys" in external resources.

The STATA cleaning do-file and the data quality report on the dataset can also be found in external resources.