Profiling numeracy literacy among ninth-grade students: Empirical evidence from junior secondary education

Numeracy literacy in this study refers to students' capacity to interpret quantitative information in context, mathematize situations, use representations, justify their reasoning, select strategies, and employ symbols and tools to support defensible decisions. To address Indonesia's low performance on PISA tasks, we developed an operational profile of 9th-grade students using OECD indicators adapted to the Indonesian junior high school geometry curriculum through Candi Jiwa-based items. Using a descriptive qualitative design with quantitative support, we administered seven open-ended geometry problems to students in Karawang, Purwakarta, and Subang. Test scores were summarized to classify achievement levels. At the same time, classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with students and teachers were used to diagnose reasoning and strategy tendencies and recurring error patterns. Results show that 85.71% of students scored below 60 (low), 14.28% scored 60–80 (medium), and none exceeded 80 (high). Students' strongest area was written communication, mainly descriptive or procedural (restating givens and listing steps). Weaknesses clustered in mathematization, reasoning and argumentation, representation, strategy selection, and use of formal symbols and mathematical tools, indicating procedural competence with limited transfer to contextual modeling. Candi Jiwa serves as a place-based anchor that can lower entry barriers and guide culturally grounded, cognitively manageable task design aligned with OECD processes.