Skip to Main Navigation
Results BriefsJanuary 10, 2023

Improving Learning Outcomes through Social Accountability and Performance-based Teacher Allowance Payment in Indonesia

The World Bank Improving Teacher Performance and Accountability (KIAT Guru) project empowered citizens in Indonesia to develop service agreements with teachers and monitor and evaluate the delivery of promised services. This approach significantly improved student learning outcomes, especially when it was paired with sanctions for teacher absence. The program benefitted 26,000 students (47 percent of whom were girls) in five disadvantaged districts of Indonesia: West Manggarai, East Manggarai, Ketapang, Landak, and Sintang

Challenge

Like many low- and middle-income countries, Indonesia has struggled to improve the quality of education. In remote areas, geographical challenges and the high cost of monitoring schools hindered supervision by district governments. As a result, the rates of teacher absenteeism were higher than the national average, while student learning outcomes werelower. The KIAT Guru baseline survey found that one in five teachers was absent and student learning outcomes were two grade levels below the curriculum target.

 

Approach

KIAT Guru aimed to improve teacher presence, teacher service performance, and student learning outcomes. The World Bank supported the Government of Indonesia in designing and financing a policy experiment and evaluated its impact through analytics and advisory services. This first phase of KIAT Guru empowered citizens to conduct diagnostic student learning assessments created by KIAT Guru based on global practices on citizen-led assessments. A user committee that  represented parents and community members developed joint agreements with teachers to improve learning environments, monitored the delivery of promised services, evaluated teachers’ scorecards for priority services, and reported the results to the government. This social accountability approach was implemented and evaluated in combination with three models of payment for the teacher remote area allowance provided by the government, with the amount ranging from IDR 1.5 million ($103) to an average of IDR 2.9 million ($200) per month: (a) teacher allowance paid in full independent of performance, (b) tying teacher allowance to teacher presence as verified by community monitoring, and (c) tying teacher allowance to community evaluation of teacher service performance indicators from joint agreements with the user committee. 

Image
26,000

The program benefitted 26,000 students (47 percent of whom were girls) in five disadvantaged districts of Indonesia.

Results

The World Bank’s impact evaluation found that all three models improved learning outcomes. The model that tied social accountability with teacher pay-for-performance based on teacher presence was the most effective and sustainable. Compared to the control group this model significantly improved the presence of teachers whose allowance was tied to this indicator and student learning outcomes as evaluated by the project.

It took 12 months for the control schools to complete the one-year curriculum, as opposed to 8.5 months for the most effective KIAT Guru model. The effect persisted one year after the end of the project. The project improved human capital in targeted schools and the capacity of local governments to establish performance-based teacher pay to improve education services.

  • Between 2017 and 2019, community evaluation of teacher presence improved from an average score of 65 to 95, while the score for teacher service performance improved from an average score of 56 to 97; three rounds of unannounced teacher absence surveys found that the percentage of classrooms with teachers present increased from 75 to 87 percent;
  • The impact evaluation surveys found improvement in parents’ satisfaction with education quality, from a baseline of 28 percent in 2016 to 64 percent at the end of the project in 2018; 
  • The project trained and coached 1,843 (45 percent female) community members and 203 (26 percent female) village-level facilitators on conducting monitoring and evaluating teacher service performance indicators. Their improved capacity affected 2,621 (48 percent female) school providers (principals and teachers), and benefitted 25,942 (47 percent female) students with improved support for learning at school and at home and improved learning outcomes.

The World Bank

KIAT Guru intervention which combined social accountability with teacher pay based on presence improved student learning outcomes in remote schools. (Photo: Fauzan Ijazah/World Bank)

 

From Beneficiary

“Over the last six months, there have been quite a lot of changes. First, there’s been change in the fulfillment of [the teachers’] duties. Before, they were maybe less effective in delivering teaching materials, but now that there are indicators for foundational skills, they’re right on target.” – A school leader in SDN Engkangin. 

 

World Bank Group Contribution

The World Bank provided funding through trust funds in the amount of $5 million for the project implementation and $1.2 million for the impact evaluation studies.

 

Partners

The Ministry of Education and Culture and the National Team for Acceleration of Poverty Reduction provided national policy direction and support. The governments of Ketapang, Landak, Sintang, West Manggarai, and East Manggarai led the project district implementation. National, district, and village governments contributed $1.6 million for implementation, and $5.1 million indirectly through performance-based teacher allowances that were made performance-based by the project. The World Bank provided a grant for implementation to Yayasan BaKTI, a national NGO, and technical and analytical support to the government. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) financed the trust funds[1], amounting to $6.8million and $2.5million, respectively, including for supervision and analytical works. 

 

Looking Ahead

Following the first phase of KIAT Guru, the government requested World Bank support to expand the most effective intervention to 410 schools in the same five districts. KIAT Guru Phase 2 simplified the social accountability approach and tested two scale-up pathways and institutional arrangements. The first model kept the appointment of user committee by village government, while reducing the involvement of the project facilitators, while the second model strengthened the school committee appointed by school principal and trained school supervisors.

Phase 2 also digitized the social accountability and performance-based teacher pay processes into the government’s management information system. When Phase 2 ended in 2020, the government decided to sustain the project independently, and adopted a few aspects of the project’s innovation into national programs and policies. The KIAT Guru diagnostic student learning assessment tool was adapted to support schools nation-wide.

In 2020, a ministerial decree was issued to provide additional operational funds for 55,000 schools that were geographically remote or serving a higher proportion of disadvantaged schools. 

 

___________

[1] DFAT provided $4.99 mil grant for implementation of KIAT Guru Phase I, and a total of $1.8mil for analytical works and supervision; while USAID provided $1.3mil for Phase II and a total of $1.1million for analytical works and supervision.