Understanding Nadiem’s big splash in education sector – Thu, August 3 2023

From abandoning the national exams (UN) to introducing his own Merdeka Belajar (independent learning) curriculum last year, entrepreneur-turned-minister Nadiem Makarim and his colleagues at the Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministry have rolled out numerous policies that have taken many by surprise after years of rigid teaching methods. The Jakarta Post’s Dio Suhenda sat down with Anindito Aditomo, the ministry’s Educational Standards, Curriculum and Assessment Agency (BSKAP) head who was at the forefront of many of these new policies, to understand what motivated the changes ushered in by Nadiem.

Question: What was the common denominator that connected all of Nadiem’s new policies? Were they made specifically to mitigate pandemic-related learning loss?

Answer: Our focus, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, was to improve the learning quality for students, since we are facing a learning crisis, in which students are not learning even when they are in school. It’s true that [the pandemic-induced] problem of learning loss has made the situation worse, but this learning crisis has been around for decades.