Save Our Children School Age fo Better Future !

INTERNATIONAL    |    WORLD EDUCATION   -   

The education sector has been badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost a year, children are forced to learn from home using digital technology equipment. This relatively new teaching and learning method must of course be supported by the availability of online educational infrastructure, such as smartphones, laptops and internet facilities.

However, during distance learning, many students drop out of school. From data from the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI), the number of children who have dropped out of school has increased dramatically from January to 2021. This dropout rate mostly affects children from poor families.

1.Students drop out of school because of marriage

The number of students who quit school due to marriage reached 33 students from Seluma, Bengkulu City and Bima districts. On average, students who get married are in class XII, which is a few months away from the school graduation exam.

Because they are still PJJ, the majority are married without the knowledge of the school. The homeroom teacher or Counseling Guidance (BK) teacher only found out after a "home visit" was carried out because he had never participated in PJJ again.

The number 33 at the beginning of 2021 is a fairly high number. In 2020, from the results of the supervision of face-to-face school preparation, data on the dropout rate reached 119 cases, the areas covering Bima, West Sumbawa, Dompu, West Lombok, East Lombok, North Lombok, Mataram city, Bengkulu City, Seluma, Wonogiri, Jepara., and Bandung district.

2.Students drop out of school because of work

A number of vocational and junior high school students were forced to work because their parents were economically affected during the pandemic. So children have to help the family economy. There is one junior high school student in Cimahi who works as a construction worker to help his family's economy. And 1 student in Jakarta who works in a printing press is helping his parents' business because they have no employees since the pandemic and there are no print orders.

3.Students drop out of school due to monthly tuition arrears

The number of cases of arrears in tuition fees that complained to KPAI is quite high, starting from March 2020 to February 2021 there are 34 cases. Of the 34 cases, 3 of them came from the same school. Almost 90% of cases are from private schools and 75% of cases are from SMA/SMK level.

School arrears occur due to the impact of the pandemic in which the family's economy of the children is significantly affected, meeting their daily needs is already difficult, so paying tuition fees are sacrificed. On average, those who complain have not paid their tuition fees for 6-11 months, the family's economic factor which has slumped during the pandemic is the main cause.

Private schools, which are also affected by the arrears, generally send invoices to parents and provide conditions that they must pay in installments. However, because there is no money to pay at all, many parents decide to expel their children from school.

4. Addicted to online games

During surveillance in the city of Cimahi, KPAI obtained data that there were 2 7th grade junior high school students who quit school due to addiction to online games, one of whom took a leave of absence for 1 year for the psychological recovery process.

Stories from teachers in several areas also show a surprising fact, that children who did not appear at online PJJ in the morning were still sleeping because they played online games until dawn.

5.Student dies

The results of monitoring cases of students dropping out of school due to death occurred in one of the senior high schools in Bima Regency due to being swept away by the current during the flood disaster last January, and another from one of the private vocational schools in Jakarta who died due to a motorcycle accident. So according to KPAI data, there are 2 students who died in the even semester of the 2020/2021 academic year.