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View all search resultsYearender: Student safety in spotlight in 2025
From a boarding school collapse that killed more than 60 students to numerous fatal bullying incidents, 2025 exposed deep weaknesses in Indonesia’s ability to guarantee student safety.
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Systemic breakdown?: An employee looks for salvageable items on Nov. 4, in a collapsed classroom at SMKN 1 Gunung Putri in Bogor regency, West Java, the day after heavy rain and strong winds damaged five buildings and injured 42 students at the vocational senior high school. (Antara/Yulius Satria Wijaya)
F
rom a boarding school collapse that killed more than 60 students to repeated instances of bullying ending in death, 2025 exposed deep weaknesses in Indonesia’s ability to guarantee student safety.
On Sept. 29, the three-story Al Khoziny Islamic boarding school (pesantren) in Sidoarjo, East Java, collapsed while hundreds of students were performing afternoon prayers on the first floor. The incident, dubbed the country’s deadliest non-natural disaster this year, killed 67 students and left five permanently disabled.
A month later, two more students died in structural collapses in two different pesantren in East Java.
These incidents have raised alarm over chronic mismanagement and lax safety standards across education institutions nationwide.
According to Statistics Indonesia’s 2025 Education Report, primary schools, which number about 149,000 nationwide, remain the most structurally vulnerable. Fewer than 40 percent of classrooms are in good condition, roughly half are lightly or moderately damaged and close to 11 percent are severely damaged, the highest share across all school levels.
Junior high schools record 50.3 percent of classrooms in good condition, 42.7 percent lightly or moderately damaged and nearly 7 percent severely damaged. Senior high schools fare slightly better, with 60.3 percent of classrooms in good condition and 6.2 percent severely damaged.
Read also: Another fatal building collapse raises alarm over ‘pesantren’ safety standards
