School Improvement Framework for Indonesia

Indonesia is determined to improve the quality of education. Many topdown policies have been issued to direct the necessary improvement, from making education compulsory from grade 1 to grade 9 in 1977, to the withdrawal of the high-stakes exam policy in 2021. However, none of these policies encourages schools to conduct school improvement plans tailored to their needs. Instead, they tend to be directed towards school effectiveness or quality assurance. The present research aims to formulate a school improvement framework of domains and indicators culturally and institutionally suitable for Indonesian settings. The study implements a systematic literature review methodology to extract and synthesise the most pertinent and prevalent domains from a corpus of relevant literature on school improvement frameworks. Four overarching domains of recommended focal points for school improvement efforts are determined: (1) Teaching and Learning, (2) Leadership and Management, (3) Assessment, and (4) Community and Culture. The research underscores the foundational role of pertinent data collection in these domains. Furthermore, the study discusses the implications of these emerging domains for the academic community and policymakers, highlighting how the proposed framework can significantly contribute to refining school improvement practices and policies in Indonesia. Detailed subdomains and domain indicators serve as theoretical implications to be elaborated in further research.