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aving little time at home to look after their children, more parents in Batam, Riau Islands, are sending them to Islam boarding schools — or pesantren — after they finish their final year of elementary school.

The demand for pesantren is high in the industrial city, which is a stone’s throw away from Singapore, forcing some of its top schools to close admission early for the upcoming academic year because they are fully booked.

Parent Khairul Akbar decided to send his daughter to Hidayatullah modern pesantren in Batu Aji, Batam, with an admission fee of Rp 15 million (US$ 1125.78) and a monthly tuition fee of Rp 1 million.

He picks her up once a month so she can gather with the whole family at home.

“Amid my tight schedule and limited time to take care of her growing up, the pesantren has become an alternative. [There], she will also always have friends and people to share her stories,” Khairul said.

The Islamic education foundation An-Ni’mah Dapur 12 Kampung Tua, for example, closed registration for new students last week. It has received 300 applicants, but can only fill 123 seats for new students.

The pesantren offers two streams: the traditional program, or salafiyah, which offers only Islamic studies as a subject; and a modern curriculum that combines Islamic modules with regular junior high school and high school programs.

“The modern pesantren is integrated with state junior high school SMPN 44 Batam, meaning that all the students here are also the students of SMPN 44,” said the school’s male dormitory supervisor, Ahmad Burhan.

This blended program was what attracted parents to An-Ni’mah, he added.

The pesantren currently has 963 students at junior and senior high school levels, a significant increase from only 250 in 2010.

To study there, a new student will have to pay an admission fee of Rp 7 million and a monthly school fee of Rp 750,000.

Unlike their counterparts in Java, the parents of Batam choose to send their children to boarding schools because they are regarded as trusted moral guardians, said chairman of the Batam Pesantren Forum Zein Zaunuddin.

“This is different from the parents in Java, who mostly send their children to pesantren because they want them to master religion,” he said, adding that Batam’s pesantren graduates could still compete in the city’s tight labor market.

The first pesantren in Batam, Darul Falah in Nongsa, was established in 1995. By 2015, the city was home to 43 pesantren, accommodating some 3,000 students.

Batam Religious Affairs Agency head Zulkifli AKA said, in addition to these registered institutions, there were also unregistered ones that provided Islamic education in traditional ways.

“We will not close them, as long as they do not break any rules,” he said, adding that these schools offered parents an alternative education for their children.