Acceleration or Internationalization? A Cost-Effectiveness-Analysis of Improving School Quality in Indonesia

As a means to improve the school quality in Indonesia, Indonesian government introduced and encouraged two different kinds of programs: The International Standard Schools and Acceleration Class Program. Both programs are expected to contribute to improve the quality of education system in Indonesia. However, quantitative analysis to evaluate their impact on student’s performance is lacking in the literature. In this paper, we use the Difference in Difference method (DD) using the school data from Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) to estimate the effectiveness of both programs in increasing school performance, measured by their national exam score. We then combined the cost data with this effectiveness measure to compare their cost-effectiveness. Our finding suggests that international standard school program is more effective to increase the math and Bahasa score. However, in term of cost effectiveness the result is mixed. International standard school is more cost-effective in increasing students score in Bahasa, while acceleration class is more cost-effective in increasing students score in math subject.