Written By Yvonne Rennesia Gulo
Edited by Justin Lee
Amidst the progressing COVID-19 situation resulting in an online school in Indonesia for almost two years, many educators worry about learning loss among students. However, the fervent effects of the pandemic reach far beyond. Many children lose the opportunity to gain knowledge and skills for human resource development. This situation shows that students are considered to have lost learning or have not learned anything. If anything, the areas that have the highest risk of learning loss as a result of distance learning during the pandemic COVID-19 are some outermost, leading, and underdeveloped regions.
Distance learning barriers are primarily classified into three groups: obstacles related to learning activities, obstacles related to technology, as well as personal and environmental constraints of students. Internet connection became one of the reasons because Internet access is not yet evenly distributed throughout Indonesia. Furthermore, based on data from the Ministry of Education and Culture in April of 2020, there were 68.73 million students required to do remote learning. The stifled interaction between students and teachers inadvertently affected the level of understanding exhibited by such students. In addition, the Association for Indonesian Teachers and Education noted that 40% of teachers conduct distance learning between one to two hours per day amidst the pandemic. On the contrary, during normal learning conditions, one normally is learning in school for roughly six or seven hours.
Consequently, distance learning in Indonesia due to the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated various negative social stigmas: namely the decrease in student learning achievements, an increase in students dropping out of school, and violence among students. Before the pandemic, there were roughly 157,000 students across Indonesia that dropped out of high school in the 2018-2019 school year. Alarmingly, this statistic practically doubled as a result when 301,000 students dropped out of high school in the 2020-2021 school year. According to the Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers (APJII), internet usage nationwide has increased by roughly 70% with the islands of Maluku-Papua and Bali with the lowest access due to their rural setting.
Provinces that are vulnerable and have a high risk of being affected by learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic, include Papua Island, Nusa Tenggara Islands, and the Maluku Islands. Areas that have difficulty accessing the internet will make it difficult for students and educators in the learning process. Economic inequality and Social inequality are seen in the distribution of the poor and have an impact on learning loss which is greater in areas with a lower economic class population. Elementary school is a level of education that is vulnerable to the impact of learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, where the number of elementary school students is the highest among students at other levels. This is in line when viewed from the highest dropout rate experienced by elementary school students and the average length of schooling for residents in areas prone to learning loss only reaches the level of elementary school.
Sources
Cerelia, Jessica, et al. SEMINAR NASIONAL STATISTIKA X ( 2021) Learning Loss Akibat Pembelajaran Jarak Jauh Selama Pandemi Covid-19 Di Indonesia.
tim. “Mengenal Learning Loss, Kondisi Yang Ditakutkan Nadiem.” Gaya Hidup, www.cnnindonesia.com/gaya-hidup/20210922183800-284-698049/mengenal-learning-loss-kondisi-yang-ditakutkan-nadiem.
“”Learning Loss” Di Masa Pandemi.” Kompas.id, 21 Mar. 2022, www.kompas.id/baca/artikel-opini/2022/03/20/learning-loss-di-masa-pandemi. Accessed 22 June 2022.
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