Indonesia's EduTech During COVID-19 and Beyond
Education is a right that cannot be compromised, yet some factors may hinder students from receiving it properly, such as the recent COVID-19 outbreak. In Indonesia, over 530,000 schools are forced to close amid the pandemic, affecting about 68 million students overall. Indonesia’s education industry urgently needs a reformation to ensure that everybody gets equal access to it. In light of this outbreak, Indonesia is forced to provide education by incorporating technology into learning, causing EdTech to be on the rise in improving learning outcomes.
Over the past five years, there have been improvements in implementing digital learning into daily lives - the collaboration between educational institutions and digital education platforms to equip their classrooms with digital learning facilities is growing. Technological advancements in education, specifically in Indonesia, have provided numerous benefits to educational institutions and citizens, such as easy access to online tests, tutorials, and live video streaming with teaching facilities.
Accessing online learning will require one to have a decent internet connection and a device, but rural areas and lower-income Indonesian students are lacking in those. Limited incentives to value potential EdTech products in Indonesia as a result of poor digital literacy and infrastructure across the nation is another constraint that the EdTech sector will face. Moreover, a low willingness to pay from schools and parents as online learning is believed to have less effectiveness than in-person learning will affect Indonesia’s underdeveloped consumer as the student and school data might be put at risk.
We are excited to see the developments in the EdTech space. With making the right investments, we can help reform Indonesia’s education world.
By: Vanessa Yaputri