1. Introduction
Poverty is still the main challenge faced by the Indonesian government today. In 2017, the population living below the poverty line was calculated as 9.8% or equal to 25.8 million people, resulting in inequality of access in many sectors [
1]. When the Asian financial crisis hit the economy badly in 1998, the poverty rate increased to 24.2%. On the other hand, after the economic crisis, poverty decreased from 24.2% in 1998 to 9.4% in 2019. Recent decades of strong economic growth, driven by exports and household consumption, contributed significantly to this achievement [
2].
A high poverty rate leads to inequality, whereby inequality burdens equal access, especially to education and health services [
3]. The most serious difficulties in poverty alleviation may have occurred when the Indonesian country experienced its first economic downturn in nearly 20 years due to the COVID-19 epidemic [
4]. The epidemic resulted in social disruption since millions of people potentially fell into poverty. Therefore, existing poverty alleviation efforts need to be reviewed to compensate for the growing obstacles. From the perspective of education, poverty causes low education attendance in Indonesia. It is known that 8% of the Indonesian population aged 15–24 years fail to complete primary school, 36% of men and 35% of women drop out of school (do not complete their education), and only 16% of Indonesian adults have tertiary education [
5]. Indonesia’s low educational attainment results in low PISA test scores, which place Indonesia in the 36th position in the world [
6]. The government has implemented a number of supporting policies to raise the PISA test score, including producing a national standard test, improving the quality of education through curriculum development, and conducting yearly regular teacher training [
7]. The Indonesian government has implemented a number of measures to reduce poverty, such as a free education program, which will directly increase access to education. However, the program cannot be implemented nationally due to the limited resources of local governments, due to autonomy, so further improvement is required [
8]. Furthermore, the government’s approach to increasing access to education is to use subsidized programs and direct cash assistance as a form of school assistance. Government assistance was proven to significantly reduce the number of poor people in rural and urban areas by 0.3% per year from 2012 to 2016 [
9].
The form of direct school cash assistance provided by the Indonesian government is the Smart Indonesia Program (SIP). The basic concept of the SIP is to provide direct cash assistance to Indonesian students who cannot access elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school to pay for tuition fees and secondary needs such as books and other school supplies [
10].
In addition, through the Smart Indonesia Program (SIP), the government launched the Smart Indonesia Card (SIC) under the authorization of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) through the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction. The program aims to help poor students to obtain a proper education, prevent children from dropping out of school, and meet their schooling needs. This assistance is expected to be used by students for fulfilling school needs such as transportation costs for students to go to school, school supplies costs, and pocket money. With the Smart Indonesia Card, it is hoped that there will be no more students dropping out of school due to a lack of funds (see
Figure 1). The Indonesia Smart Card (SIC) is given to underprivileged students from elementary school to high school.
The implementation of the SIP has resulted in a positive impact in several regions, such as Harjamukti Regency. The SIP has been proven to prevent children from dropping out of school and accommodate the needs of children who have dropped out of school [
11]. In the Gorontalo Province, the SIP also shows 90% of the distribution of effective numbers and contributes positively to madrasah attendance rates [
12]. Furthermore, in Banyumas Regency, the implementation of the SIP in elementary schools is already on track [
13]. Positively, it is undeniable that the SIP has had a positive impact on access to education in several regions in Indonesia.
However, the process of implementing the SIP is also challenging for some regions. In Tasikmalaya Regency, because the SIP lacks the accountability principle, the distribution of funds for the SIP is not properly managed [
14]. In Pekanbaru City, the quality of assistance provided by the Smart Indonesia Program is frequently poor due to a lack of coordination, a lack of socialization, and slow payment procedures [
15]. Similarly, in the Yogyakarta area, the SIP fails to carry out its role in reducing the dropout rate in Bantul Regency, Yogyakarta, because parents are not fully educated about the SIP [
16]. Therefore, several problems in the implementation of the SIP must be identified and analyzed because they can become a burdensome challenge in the national implementation of the SIP.
Based on the analysis above, there are some problems in the implementations of the SIP in several regions in Indonesia. First, there is the problem of targeting and distributing the SIC program. There are two findings that have caused this problem to be evaluated. The distribution of SICs has been considered successful and on target in accordance with the specified criteria [
17]. On the other side of these findings, there are several researchers who state that the distribution of SICs is considered unsuccessful, especially regarding targets that are not yet right [
18]. This inaccuracy of the targets is caused by processes and bureaucracy that do not run according to procedures, especially regarding the submission of prospective SIC recipients.
Second, there is the issue of the impact of the SIC program. On this issue, there are also two different opinions. Some researchers state that the SIC program has a positive impact on students, such as increased learning motivation, by easing students’ concerns about the cost of attending school—which relieves them of the need to work after school, improving academic achievement, because students have more time to study rather than to work after school—and willingness to learn, because the government offers free, high-quality study materials [
14,
18,
19]. Some researchers state that SICs do not have any impact on students in terms of learning unless the existence of SICs provides opportunities for students to take part in the formal education process [
18,
20,
21,
22].
The third issue is about the use of SIC program funds. Based on several findings, the use of SIC funds is said to be appropriate, namely, for education financing [
23], but in other findings, the use of SIC funds is not appropriate [
24]. Based on these problems, it is necessary to conduct comprehensive research on the evaluation of SIC policies.
If we look at the opinions of experts regarding program evaluation, they say that a series of activities are carried out intentionally to determine the level of success of a program, and this is called program evaluation [
25,
26,
27]. Program evaluation can also be interpreted as a form of evaluative research, namely, to find out the situation and conditions in an environment [
28]. Evaluation is applied in planned or unplanned conditions [
29,
30,
31]. Program evaluation in several areas is considered very important to optimize the SIC program. In the evaluation of the SIC program, the extent of the success of the SIC program, which aims to improve access to education services, is investigated.
The accuracy of targeting and the correct use of the funds that are received are very important, because the SICs given to participants with the right target characteristics, namely, those coming from poor or vulnerable families, will be able to support the realization of human resources quality. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the main challenges in the SIP implementation, especially in the Central Java province in Indonesia. Conceptually, this study was divided into several steps. First, this study collected data related to the problems that occur in the distribution of SIP funds in the province of Central Java, Indonesia by using questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and observations. Second, the data were analyzed using qualitative analysis, using context, input, process, and product (CIPP) analysis. Third, after identifying the obstacles at each stage of the SIP implementation using the CIPP method, a new mechanism was developed based on the data. The Central Java province was chosen because it has the highest number of recipients of the SIP, and most of them are vocational school students.
2. Literature Review
To begin, the distinction between sustainability education and sustainable education will be discussed; these are two distinct concepts that are frequently confused, as stated by the authors of [
32]. First, the concept of sustainability education refers to either the activities that an educational institution conducts to achieve environmental sustainability or to a study program that contains those agendas, both of which are capable of protecting against environmental crises and creating a “greener” awareness among students, such as through material recycling in the school [
32,
33,
34]. Sustainable education, on the other hand, refers to the activities that an institution can take to provide a substantial study program [
35]. These efforts could include program enhancements and an institutional development strategy. Furthermore, sustainable education refers to a process capable of assuring “financial sustainability” for an educational institution and its activities [
32,
36].
The Smart Indonesia Program (SIP) is one of the Government of Indonesia’s “sustainable education” programs, and it was launched on 3 November 2014. Previously, the government of Indonesia implemented the BOS (School Operational Fund), which was launched in July 2005, to aid schools in Indonesia in their ability to provide learning more optimally. As a result, this program was focused on the needs of the schools, but it was unsuccessful in advancing educational equality because of poor budgeting practices. As a result, many schools continue to charge their students for access to education [
37]. Different from the BOS program, the SIP aims to increase access to education services for children aged 6–21 years, including up to 12 years of education or equivalent up to secondary education, and even to higher education, as an effort to prevent students from dropping out of school due to economic limitations and to attract students who have dropped out of school to return to school or attend formal and non-formal educational institutions [
38]. The goal is in line with the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia Article 31 Paragraph (1), which states that every citizen has the right to education. This is further confirmed in Law Number 20 of 2003 concerning the National Education System Article 1 Paragraph (18), which states that the program is compulsory. Furthermore, education is one of the fundamental rights to which the government is accountable for ensuring access, in accordance with the non-discrimination principle, ensuring that everyone has equal educational rights and is linked to numerous legislative instruments [
39].
In Indonesia, the government has implemented the Smart Indonesia Program to facilitate students from poor or pre-prosperous families to receive an education. The program uses Smart Indonesia Cards (SICs), and the distribution of SIC funds is managed using the SIC application (called SIPINTAR). The amount of funds disbursed at each level of education is IDR 450,000 at the elementary level, IDR 750,000 at the junior high level, and IDR 1,000,000 at the senior high or vocational high levels per year. Nationally, the number of recipients of the SIP in Indonesia at all levels of education can be seen in
Table 1.
Table 1 shows that there are differences between the SIP recipients and poor people. Furthermore, the majority of SIC recipients are vocational high school students because they are graduates that are ready to work, allowing the government to reap the benefits of assisting poor or pre-prosperous families as soon as possible.
The IDR 500,000 per semester or IDR 1,000,000 per year cash assistance to vocational high school students is expected to increase students’ interest in learning and be put to good use by SIC beneficiaries [
14]. Unfortunately, in terms of disbursing SICs, there are still beneficiaries who experience problems, including changing mechanisms for receiving assistance, inappropriate use of (cash) funds, and difficulties in collecting evidence of the use of SIC funds.
5. Discussion
The results show that the SIC program was successfully implemented with an average score of 84.7%. It can be concluded that the SIP was increasingly contributing to supporting education for students at the vocational high school level. Based on the results of the analysis that was carried out, several identifications of the strengths of the implementation of the SIP are as follows:
- (a)
Student participation can be explained by using several indicators, such as the schools guiding students to participate in the SIP (82.0% of respondents answered strongly agree); the role of schools in overseeing the SIC disbursement process (82.0% of respondents answered strongly agree); the schools guiding students in registering for SICs (82.0% of respondents answered strongly agree); the schools notifying students when SICs have been disbursed (90.8% of respondents answered strongly agree); and the schools informing students that they have not taken the SICs in question (78% of respondents answered strongly agree).
- (b)
The distribution of SIC funds was considered effective and on target, whereby through student participation, it was known that SIC funds had been distributed according to the recipient category, namely, poor families (75.6% answered strongly agree); there was minimum falsification of related documents (91.2% answered disagree for document falsification) in the process of distributing SIP funds; the SIP funds were suitable for school needs (93.8% answered strongly agree and agree); and there were no deductions charged by the channeling banks to students receiving SIP funds (86.3% answered strongly agree).
- (c)
The SIP supported student facilities and infrastructures for learning, with 55.8% of respondents strongly agreeing that the SIP benefited students’ families by facilitating online learning activities.
In addition to the benefits of implementing the SIP in the research area, there were several drawbacks to doing so, which can be summarized as follows:
- (a)
There was no synchronization of central-level regulations with field-level standard operating procedures (SOPs), from distribution to budget accountability. This was revealed during interviews with several school principals. In addition, the absence of a clear SOP in the reporting of funds that must be carried out by students was a separate obstacle, which reduced the accountability aspect of the use of funds.
- (b)
Regarding data that had not been integrated, it was identified that the data used in the distribution of SICs were different from those found in the National Education Basis Data (called DAPODIK) and the Ministry of Social Affairs. Through interviews, this was known to affect the efficiency of the SIP distribution, which had the potential to be less targeted.
After analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the SIP, there are several possible solutions, including the following:
- (a)
The synchronization of regulations at the central level in the form of official regulations by the Secretariat General of the Ministry of Education and Culture, or related regulations, with the form of the standard operating procedures (SOPs) at the implementing level to reduce administrative malpractices;
- (b)
The need for a centralized database, which is managed with regular SOPs, to reduce the potential for errors in the distribution of SICs to those who are less entitled, so the SICs can be properly targeted;
- (c)
The need for special SOPs related to monitoring and evaluating the use of SIP funds so that no maladministration can lead to misuse of the government budget;
- (d)
There is a need for monitoring related to the use of SIP funds by recipients of the funds that is integrated into the SIPINTAR application by adding student features.
Furthermore, the results of the input evaluation show that the target recipients of SICs were in the very good category at 83.40%. Based on the interviews with related parties, the low value of the target indicator for SIC recipients was because the names of students listed in the decree on the list of SIC recipients were not all the same as those proposed by the schools. According to the principal of a vocational high school, this was due to the less-than-optimal socialization of the SIP. This is supported by previous research. The previous research revealed that several supporting factors were identified as affecting the effectiveness of the Smart Indonesia Card program. However, the most important burden is the little routine socialization in schools for students and parents [
23].
In the process evaluation, it was identified that the target accuracy indicator of SIC recipients in the vocational schools who were the respondents for this study was included in the very good category at 87.60%, while the other two indicators were included in the good category. Each indicator had a score of above 80%. One of the reasons based on the results of the interview was that there was no administration fee charged to the beneficiary at the time of the disbursement of funds, so the amount of money received was appropriate without any deductions. In addition, timeliness in distribution was also an additional point that made the distribution process very good. The results of the interviews with students, parents, and schools, as well as the results of the questionnaires, show that there were no deductions by the schools or the banks. The amount of money received by students was IDR 1,000,000 (1 million rupiahs) per year. This type of assistance was quite meaningful for SIC recipients, especially for those who attended private schools because it could be used to pay tuition fees that were in arrears.
The results of the product evaluations show that on average, respondents stated that they strongly agreed with the impact of this SIC program. This research concluded that 90% stated strongly agree, which means that the recipients of SIP assistance funds used the funds according to their designation. However, some respondents said that only part of the SIP assistance fund was used to pay tuition fees, and some respondents from private vocational schools said that they paid tuition fees. Most importantly, the government cannot directly monitor the use of SIP funds because they are evaluated/monitored in schools and because not all SIP fund recipients provided evidence of their use of the funds.
Conceptually, the Smart Indonesia Program through the Smart Indonesia Card was quite clear, including the target recipients. This is because the legal basis for implementing the SIP is coherent, in particular, (1) Presidential Instruction Number 7 in 2014, which contains the mandate of the Smart Indonesia Program to the Ministry of Education and Culture to develop the Smart Indonesia Program, and the Smart Indonesia Cards and the distribution of Smart Indonesia Program funds to students whose parents cannot afford to pay for their education; and (2) the regulation by the Minister of Education and Culture Number 9 in 2018 as an amendment to the regulation by the Minister of Education and Culture Number 19 in 2016 concerning technical guidelines for the Smart Indonesia Program. It can be interpreted that the implementation of SIP financial assistance is feasible to continue.
However, it appeared to be quite problematic at the implementation level, both in terms of the validity and accuracy of the data used as the basis for SICs and how they were distributed. Based on the research that has been carried out, several main problems were identified in the SIC distribution process. The problems were related to the accuracy of the data used to determine potential SIP recipients. Based on interviews conducted involving the SIC admin, the heads of vocational high schools, and other related parties, this problem occurred because the data used came from the registration data for new junior high school students. Many families were able to find poor evidence papers at the time of enrollment for their children to be admitted to public schools. Poor letters from neighborhood coordinators were discovered to have been used for the National Education Basis Data (called DAPODIK) data, which eventually became invalid, as well as student profiles.
The inaccuracy of the data used in determining prospective SIC recipients ultimately created a sense of injustice in the community and a domino effect. As a result, many underprivileged students did not receive SICs, but students who did not need them, such as graduates or families with capable parents, received SIP funding. Therefore, the inaccuracy of the data used to determine SIP recipients made some of the SIP assistance not on target. As a result, funds that should have been allocated to poor families were not properly channeled, and the government’s desire for SIC holders to receive SIP assistance was not fully realized, resulting in not all students from poor families being able to help their families’ economic needs in the future. In addition, human resources investment could not be achieved.
Other findings on the constraints in the data collection process are as follows:
- (a)
Because schools were not involved in determining the target recipients of SIP assistance, schools were extremely vulnerable to data collection errors, which resulted in the inaccurate distribution of SIP funds in the absence of intervention. The solutions proposed to address these issues are as follows: (1) the requirement for initial data input for school DAPODIK. Then, DAPODIK and DTKS (Data Terpadu Kesejahteraan Sosial/Indonesia Integrated Social Welfare Data) synchronization should be performed to improve the intended data integration mechanism to ensure data accuracy. Currently, the data inputted into DAPODIK are junior high school student data, and there is no data updating. As a result, the possibility of incorrect data is high because the economic situations of the parents’ families have changed. (2) Improve supervision by involving schools during data verification and validation in targeting SIC recipients so that the mechanism is more transparent and accountable. This can be carried out by making a clear standard operating procedure (SOP) related to the mechanism for submitting data with school involvement in addition to the department’s social media to be added to the DTKS data.
- (b)
There were problems related to the distribution and disbursement of SIP financial assistance. The method and mechanism for distributing SIP funds encountered many obstacles. The time allotted to activate bank accounts was deemed too short, causing many prospective recipients of SIC assistance to forego the account activation process, hampering the distribution of SIC funds. Furthermore, many inactive accounts were discovered for the following year’s recipients, causing SIC funds to be held at schools. Based on the interview results, the banks are expected to be able to open a special SIC service counter with a different service scheme than conventional services.
- (c)
Problems related to the monitoring and evaluation process were also encountered in this study. Many students were late or did not even submit accounting reports on the use of SIC funds to schools, thus disrupting the administration process of the intended distribution. Then, the lack of involvement of several related parties such as the Office of Social Affairs and Education in the financial evaluation of SIC distribution also has a high potential for maladministration, which can later disrupt the SIC reporting process.
According to the findings of the interviews with various parties, the process of uploading proof of data on the use of SIP funds should be carried out by the students themselves, so that data evidence does not accumulate on the desks of school operators who have the potential to commit maladministration. On the other hand, the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) report assessed that the SIC program was ineffective and that many targets were unreliable. Monitoring is carried out to see three aspects, including being right on target, on time, and on disbursement [
19]. Based on the report by the ICW, they said that the results of this monitoring show that many (41.9%) of the poor are not registered as SIP participants [
47]. This is because the data used for the SIP are still less accurate. Some of the SIP funds were used to finance students’ personal needs (personal expenses and tuition fees/donations to schools). However, most of these funds were not used for educational purposes.
Apart from all the problems and some suggested solutions that have been described, the SIP is good and needs to be continued. Based on the description above, it is emphasized that the implementation of the SIP in vocational high schools, in general, has been carried out well, except in the use of aid funds, which has not yet been monitored due to the difficulty of collecting evidence of use.
Aside from the issues stated above, equal access to education and equity in education remain contentious. These are two distinct concepts that might lead to confusion. Access to education is defined as the stage at which a student can sign up for a program and pay the initial cost. Moreover, equal access to education assumes that there is more than one individual need, determined by objective factors (such as economic conditions, government policy, and gender and race systems) and subjective biographies (such as hard work in school or encouragement to succeed from a family member) [
48]. On the other hand, equity in education refers to the quality of an educator, academic standards, curriculum content and methodology, and standardized testing, which all lead to better student outcomes and lower educational inequality [
49].
The main equal access to education barrier is economic inequities, which create various groups of people who are radically different from each other, especially in terms of access in various aspects, and the SIP based on the previous discussion is balancing equal access to education by erasing the “economic group” boundaries. Government intervention is very important to improve access, as can be seen in Bangladesh, wherein during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was found that students who live in shacks and tin huts are mostly educated through government initiatives, but those who live in apartments attend private, foreign, and elite public schools. It was concluded that policy involvement by the Bangladeshi government may be the only way to support K-8 (universal) education [
50]. On the other hand, equity in education, particularly in terms of teacher quality and infrastructure, in developing countries remains one of the most pressing issues to be addressed, because equal access is deemed insufficient to educate a community, as evidenced by various indicators, such as the PISA score [
49]. The next difficulty in establishing the SIP is to create “homogeneous” education that is not just accessible to all students from any social category but also similar in terms of educational quality.