32 M. Irhamni and G. A. Sahadewo we also know very little about an effective online or distance-schooling pedagogy when access to technology varies across students.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought an abrupt change in the learning process and significantly changed the education production function. Students are no longer inter- acting with teachers and their peers in classroom settings and have to adopt learning from home approach. Students have to use available technology and the internet to attend virtual classrooms and access learning materials. Teachers have to plan and create learning materials to be delivered via synchronous and asynchronous teaching methods. Despite the adaptive responses, some students and teachers are facing diffi- culties assessing educational inputs necessary for learning from home. Inequalities in access to educational inputs during the pandemic may have a long-term impact on learning and eventually labor market outcomes. Students—mainly from low-income households—lacking access to learning materials and in-virtual-classroom would be learning significantly less than their peers (see also Mambu & Kurniawan, this volume). Students from low-income households might also receive less parental support in various forms. This inequality can result in slower learning trajectories, lower human capital accumulation, and eventually future productivity.
Ever since the pandemic hit globally, several studies have tried to examine the impact of COVID-19 on student learning outcomes, in particular whether inequality in learning was exacerbated by the pandemic. Studies by Orlov et al. (2020) show that students performed worse in the semester after the school closures. One possible contributing factor for these is the varying degree of parental involvement and access and capabilities to work with the technology required for the online learning.
Inequality in learning outcomes can be driven by inequality in inputs such as quality of online learning (Agostinelli et al., 2020), resources and parental support (Bol, 2020), digital materials (Jæger & Blaabæk, 2020), and online resources (Bacher-Hicks et al., 2021).
The long-term impacts of this pandemic on educational achievements are still unknown as studies examining past pandemics showing mixed long-term results (Ager et al., 2020; Guimbeau et al., 2020; Meyers & Thomasson, 2017). That being said, the potential of the long-term impact on educational achievement to be long-lasting should not be immediately dismissed. In particular, given that lower educational achievement would result in lower productivity in the labor market and eventually lower income in adulthood.
Most of these studies focused on the impacts of the pandemic on learning and the consequences of inequality on learning in developed countries. It is still unclear whether the conclusion with regard to the impacts of large-scale pandemics in these countries can be applied to developing countries’ context. In this context, govern- ments have lower fiscal resources to implement programs to improve learning; school systems in general have lower resources and quality; and parents and students have lower access to technologies and quality internet. Thus, the impact on learning and inequality could be larger in developing countries. Therefore, it is important to iden- tify inequalities in learning opportunities specifically in the developing countries context.
3 COVID-19 Widening the Gap in Education: Evidence from Urban Jakarta 33 This study aims to record and examine the immediate consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ learning in the context of an urban environ- ment in a developing country. Specifically, we conducted the study in the province of DKI Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. Jakarta is the hardest-hit region by the COVID-19 pandemic, as COVID-19 cases in Jakarta account for the majority number of cases in Indonesia. On March 14, 2020, the regional government through the Office of Education of DKI Jakarta issued an official letter to temporarily close learning activities in schools as a response to the large-scale social restrictions. The regional government then implemented the learning from home (LfH) policy starting on March 16, 2020, the first in Indonesia. As of the writing of this study, the regional government is planning to continue the learning from home policy in the academic year of 2021–2022.
We implemented quantitative and qualitative methods to identify the scale and scope of inequality in the learning from home process during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we launched an online survey and in-depth telephone inter- views with representative parents and teachers of elementary school students. The online survey and in-depth telephone interviews aim to answer two research ques- tions. First, is there inequality in access to educational inputs by households of different income groups? Second, are challenges faced by teachers during the learning from home process differ across low-poverty and high-poverty schools?
We focus on the elementary school level of education for three reasons. First, the primary school is one of the most basic educational levels that build the foundation for future educational paths. Therefore, inequality in elementary school level can have a long-lasting impact beyond just the period of the pandemic. Second, primary school children need more adult supervision, from both teachers and parents, in their learning process due to their age range. As such, compared to students in higher education, they face the most challenges in responding and adapting to LFH. Lastly, elementary school students account for more than half of the total students in DKI Jakarta. In addition, nearly half of the total number of teachers in DKI Jakarta are primary school teachers. This indicates that the primary school level is most affected by the LFH policy.
There are concerns regarding the readiness of students, teachers, and parents in the implementation of the learning from home process. There are also concerns about challenges that students and teachers face in the implementation of the policy, particularly students from poor and vulnerable households and teachers from high- poverty schools. Despite being the wealthiest city in Indonesia, there exists income inequality across different socioeconomic statuses. This includes not only disparity in terms of parental capacity to help the children learn but also a disparity in basic infrastructure such as ownership of technology and internet access. In Indonesia, only one-fifth of elementary students from the poorest families have access to the internet while two-thirds of elementary students from the wealthiest families do (Sparrow et al., 2020). These statistics show that there is variation in access to online learning materials and parent–teacher communication portals.
Along with a study by Smeru Research Institute (Alifia et al., 2020) and Sparrow et al. (2020), our study is among the first studies in Indonesia that attempt to identify
34 M. Irhamni and G. A. Sahadewo challenges faced by the students, parents, and teachers during the learning from home process. More importantly, our study is also among the first studies in Indonesia to identify inequality in educational inputs during the learning from home process.
The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. The next section describes the methodology of the study, including the sampling and questionnaire design, and data collection implementation. This is followed by the results which include the results from interviews with parents and teachers. The last section of this study summarizes the conclusion of this study.