Ni Kadek Suriani was looking forward to starting her second year of junior high school last year, before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Then her parents lost their jobs and she was forced to help scratch a living on Indonesia's holiday island of Bali.
"I had time selling tissues at traffic lights," the 13-year-old, wearing a black Metallica T-shirt, recalled at the headquarters of local charity Bali Street Mums, which now sponsors her studies.
That's a sharp rise from the 70% of students who could not reach the basic literacy benchmark in testing by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment in 2018, which put Indonesia in the bottom 8% of 77 participating nations. "It is a global phenomenon, not only in Indonesia," it said in a statement. "We are currently encouraging schools to start a limited face-to-face learning so that children will get back to school, interact with their teachers and friends, and have their spirit of learning rebuilt."Indonesian schools were closed for 55 weeks to August 4, compared with 25 weeks in Vietnam, 37 weeks in Japan and 57 weeks in the Philippines, according to World Bank data.
Tresnatri said the learning deficit was concerning for elementary school students, and the future prosperity of Indonesia.
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