Assessment of Indonesia's Early Childhood Education and Development Accreditation Process

Investments in early years of education and childhood development are among the most cost-effective and beneficial a country can make to tackle learning poverty, promote healthy child development, and enhance shared prosperity. Over the past two decades, the Government of Indonesia (GoI) has scaled up its commitment to early childhood education and development (ECED) through various educational reforms, policies, programs, and financial investments. With the expansion of Indonesia's ECED system, the GoI has committed to improving its quality since the early 2000s. As a key mechanism to raise the quality of ECED services, the GoI actively encourages PAUD centers to become accredited. An analysis of factors that influence whether and how PAUD centers participate in the accreditation system is helpful to inform continuous quality improvement of Indonesia's ECED services. The World Bank is providing the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (MoECRT) technical assistance and advice to improve Indonesia's ECED system. Supported by the Learning for Human Capital Development Programmatic Advisory Services and Analytics (PASA), this study was conducted to inform further improvements to Indonesia's ECED accreditation system. This report presents the findings from the abovementioned ECED accreditation system assessment and is organized in four main sections after an introduction. Section I describes the study's background and the country context, with emphasis on the ECED system and its quality assurance mechanisms. Section II details the methodology used. Section III presents a summary of the survey results. Section IV discusses the implications of the findings and outlines recommendations to inform accreditation policies and programs