Four Villages with a Primary School for Every Secondary One: Indonesian Educational Supply Geography
Keywords:
educational supply, school facilities, village infrastructure, spatial inequality, IndonesiaAbstract
Indonesia has 72,490 villages with a primary school and 18,477 with an upper secondary school, a ratio of 3.92 to one, and the ratio varies across provinces from 1.21 in DKI Jakarta to 14.32 in Papua Selatan. Using Central Statistics Agency figures for 2025 covering all thirty-eight provinces and five educational levels, this article shows that the spatial concentration of provision rises monotonically with level of education. The Gini coefficient across provinces rises from 0.4896 for villages with a primary school to 0.5057 for lower secondary, 0.5259 for upper secondary and 0.5937 for vocational secondary, and the share held by the five largest provinces rises from 43.07 to 56.08 per cent over the same sequence. Higher education is scarcer still: 3,233 villages have an institution, one for every 22.42 villages with a primary school, and the provincial ratio spans from 48.48 institutions per hundred primary-school villages in DKI Jakarta to 1.49 in Kalimantan Tengah. No province has more villages with vocational than with general upper secondary provision. The article argues that the geography of Indonesian educational supply is a nested one in which each higher level is available in a strict subset of the places offering the level below, and that the ratio between levels is a more informative provincial statistic than any count.References
Abouk, R., & Adams, S. (2022). Breakfast after the bell: the effects of expanding access to school breakfasts on the weight and achievement of elementary school children. Economics of Education Review, 87, 102224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2022.102224
Adeleke, O., & McSharry, P. E. (2022). Female enrollment, child mortality and corruption are good predictors of a country's UN Education Index. International Journal of Educational Development, 90, 102561. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2022.102561
Armand, M. K., Herman, P. R., & Honore, T. O. (2024). Inequality of educational opportunity among primary school children in Cameroon. International Journal of Educational Development, 109, 103103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2024.103103
Badan Pusat Statistik. (2026). Jumlah desa yang memiliki fasilitas sekolah menurut provinsi dan tingkat pendidikan, 2025 [Number of villages with school facilities by province and education level, 2025]. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.bps.go.id/id/statistics-table/2/MjA1IzI=/jumlah-desa-yang-memiliki-fasilitassekolah-menurut-provinsi-dan-tingkat-pendidikan.html
Barber, S. (2025). From silence to academic engagement: how refugee children with disabilities access learning through inclusive artful schools in Canada. British Educational Research Journal, 51(4), 1789-1819. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4148
Bostwick, V., & Nguyen, T. (2026). More often or longer? The effects of the academic schedule on postsecondary academic outcomes. Economics of Education Review, 113, 102812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2026.102812
Edmark, K. (2025). The impact of local supply of upper secondary field of study. Economics of Education Review, 108, 102687. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102687
Fazlul, I., Koedel, C., & Parsons, E. (2023). Free and reduced-price meal enrollment does not measure student poverty: evidence and policy significance. Economics of Education Review, 94, 102374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102374
Ferrare, J. J., Waddington, R. J., Zimmer, R., & Berends, M. (2025). The impacts of virtual charter high schools on secondary and postsecondary outcomes: opening up the black box. Educational Researcher, 54(8), 449-460. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x251337417
Fitzpatrick, M. D., Sadowski, K., Chen, C., Day, S., Konty, K., & Argenio, K. (2026). Asthma management in schools: a tool for reducing absenteeism?. Economics of Education Review, 113, 102813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2026.102813
Gates, E. F., Teasdale, R. M., Shim, C., & Hubacz, H. (2024). Whose and what values? Advancing and illustrating explicit specification of evaluative criteria in education. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 81, 101335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2024.101335
Gaurav, N., Aldersey, H. M., Lewis, J. L., & Batorowicz, B. (2023). Designing schools for all: Indian architects' perspectives about physical disability and disability-related school design needs. International Journal of Educational Development, 100, 102786. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102786
Hall, C., & Lundin, M. (2024). Technology in the classroom: personal computers and learning outcomes in primary school. Economics of Education Review, 100, 102536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102536
Kelchen, R., Ortagus, J., Rosinger, K., Baker, D., & Lingo, M. (2023). The relationships between state higher education funding strategies and college access and success. Educational Researcher, 53(2), 100-110. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x231208964
Kumar, G. N. (2023). Improving public school productivity: evidence from model schools in India. Economics of Education Review, 97, 102465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102465
Kwak, D. W., & Lee, J. Y. (2023). Attending a school with heterogeneous peers: the effects of school detracking and its attenuation. Economics of Education Review, 94, 102401. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102401
Landaud, F., & Maurin, E. (2026). Tracking when ranking matters. Economics of Education Review, 112, 102785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2026.102785
Liu, H., Xu, Y., Zhang, R., Nie, J., Rule, A., Rozelle, S., & Yuan, L. (2024). Comparing the payoff to vocational and academic secondary education in China over time. International Journal of Educational Development, 107, 103038. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2024.103038
Luschei, T. F., Chudgar, A., Kendall, N., Chirkina, T., Choi, S. Y., Gidra, A., Chavarria, Y., Chimwaza, T. M., Isaac, A. T., Makhuva, S., Muwa, I. T., & Thangaraj, M. S. (2026). Student well-being, sense of belonging, and alienation among secondary school students in Colombia, India, and Malawi. International Journal of Educational Development, 124, 103628. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2026.103628
Ollikainen, J. P., Pekkarinen, T., Uusitalo, R., & Virtanen, H. (2024). Effect of secondary education on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Economics of Education Review, 103, 102603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102603
Prentice, C. M. (2022). Educators' positive practices with refugee pupils at two schools in England. British Educational Research Journal, 48(6), 1125-1144. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3818
Serrano-Ardila, L., Baena-Navarro, R., & Carriazo-Regino, Y. (2026). Digital integration in rural education: foundations for a sustainable pedagogical model. International Journal of Educational Development, 121, 103516. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2026.103516
Stals, L., Isac, M. M., & Claes, E. (2024). Political trust among European youth: evaluating multi-dimensionality and cross-national measurement comparability. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 80, 101321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2023.101321
Undang-Undang Nomor 20 Tahun 2003 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional [Law No. 20 of 2003 on the National Education System].
Undang-Undang Nomor 6 Tahun 2014 tentang Desa [Law No. 6 of 2014 on Villages].
Vu, K., Dao, V., DeJaeghere, J., & Glewwe, P. (2024). Collaborative learning in the Vietnam Escuela Nueva model and students' learning behaviors: a mixed methods longitudinal study. International Journal of Educational Development, 106, 103017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2024.103017
Wagner, D. A., Nair, T., Thapa, A., & Kumar, A. (2025). The Gini Learning Index: a new framework to measure learning inequality across contexts. International Journal of Educational Development, 119, 103433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2025.103433
Wongmonta, S. (2023). Revisiting the wage effects of vocational education and training over the life cycle: the case of Thailand. International Journal of Educational Development, 103, 102886. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102886
Zhang, K. (2023). The long-term impact of higher education: evidence from the Gaokao reinstatement in China. Economics of Education Review, 97, 102488. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102488
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Hendy Nabil Rais Rais
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).
