Revising Indonesia’s National Education System Law: Policy Design and Institutional Equity in a Plural System

Abstract

This research examined the revision of the Undang-Undang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional (UU Sisdiknas) or Indonesia’s National Education System Law not as a technical consolidation of legislation but as a contested process of institutional redesign in a plural education system. Indonesia has long relied on large faith-based and community-based providers—Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Persatuan Islam or Islamis Union (PERSIS), and Majelis Pendidikan Kristen or Christian Education Council (MPK)—whose networks have expanded educational access across regions and social classes. Whereas prior scholarship treats such reform mainly as regulatory harmonization or political contestation, this study reframes it as a problem of institutional and fiscal design and analyzes the four organizations’ submissions as legislative-design evidence rather than advocacy. Drawing on qualitative analysis of policy documents, organizational submissions, media reporting, and comparative literature, it asks how the reform problem is framed, what participatory architecture is visible, what governance and financing the organizations propose, and what policy-design implications follow. The research argues that the dominant state framing is administratively coherent but distributively thin, and that the four submissions converge on one diagnosis: legal recognition without a binding fiscal architecture cannot produce institutional equity. Because plural education systems and community-based providers are widespread across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), these findings offer a transferable design lesson for equitable education reform across the region. Lasting reform requires embedding participation in ongoing governance and making distributive implications central to reform design.