Digital divide: Does technology exacerbate Indonesian educational inequality?

Abstraksi

Indonesia has an incremental ICT (Information and Communication Technology) development in the recent year, with ICT Development Index increase from 3.85 in 2016 to 4.33 in 2017 (ITU, 2017). However, digital divide exist between its western and eastern regions. Western regions such as Java, Sumatera and Kalimantan receive 85 percent of ICT access in compare to their eastern counterpart. Meanwhile, eastern Indonesia, having only 15 percent of the total ICT access, also facing the problem of lower education quality. Suryadarma et-al (2016) and Azzizah (2015) argue that western Indonesia has higher average education than eastern Indonesia. Furthermore, Kachala (1998); Flecknoe (2010) and Bulman et-al (2015) outline the positive correlation between ICT access and education quality. Therefore, this paper aims at estimating the inequality of educational achievement between districts in Indonesia by constructing a Gini index on average years of schooling and national exam score. An impact evaluation of ICT access to education inequality in Indonesia is adopted to understand the main determinants of education inequality. The result indicates that better school’s ICT access has negative and significant relationship with education inequality. In addition, the share of household with electricity, having personal computer, and lower transportation cost also potentially reduce the education inequality ; While the share of people living in rural area, poor household, and in eastern Indonesia worsen the education inequality. Therefore, policy regarding increase in school’s ICT access, such as Jardiknas might be important to be prioritized in attempt to reduce district education inequality.