The paper outlines the rationale for introducing mother tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) in multilingual societies. It also highlights some of the common obstacles to MTB-MLE implementation, and how they can be overcome. The paper cites the situation in Papua and outlines steps for fostering greater use of mother tongues as the language of instruction in schools.

The development objectives of the support to Free Basic Education Strategy Development are to contribute towards achieving medium- to long-term social and economic national development goals through the development of effective policies, strategies, and programs for implementation of Free Basic Education in Indonesia.

Bantuan Operasional Sekolah, or School Operational Fund was introduced in 2005 as a program to support schools and madrasahs offering basic education. The program’s specific focus has been on funds for operational non-personnel budgets for schools and madrasahs. The program was a result of the government’s decision not to increase the country’s fuel subsidy, but to direct the money to programs ...

Indonesia has made impressive improvements in education over the last decade and is on track to meeting Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3 (universal primary education and gender parity). The country has a national net primary (years 1 to 6) enrolment rate of 94.7 percent with equal enrolment for girls and boys.1 GOI recognises that it has not yet achieved its national ‘Education for All’ ...