The relationship between school quality and student achievement in Indonesia

Abstraksi

This study analyzes the relationship between school quality and student achievements at school. We measure school quality using teacher-student ratio, teacher qualification, and teacher experience; while we measure student achievement using national exam score. We use the 3rd wave of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) administered in 2000 and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method. We find that teacher-student ratio does not significantly influence student achievement at school. However, we find that teacher qualification and teacher experience are positively correlated with student achievements. Comparing public school and private school, we found that among the three measures of school quality, only teacher qualification which has a significant effect to student achievements. From a policy perspective, we propose that increasing education quality can start from increasing the quality of the teacher. Therefore, it is important to focus on having equality of teacher qualification and competency across regions to reduce regional disparity in Indonesia.