Education and Culture Minister Nadiem Makarim told a virtual press conference on Nov. 20 that the idea emerged from concerns about the negative impacts of online learning at home, such as increased dropouts for economic reasons, decreasing attendance in early childhood education (PAUD), stress for children from a lack of peer-to-peer interaction and the increasing rate of domestic violence.

A study by the COVID-19 containment task force of the Indonesian Clinical Psychology Association (IPK), however, has found that at-home learning did not have a significantly negative impact on the mental wellbeing of children.

Involving 15,304 children in 32 out of 34 provinces in November, the study explored the impacts of three types of learning on the children’s emotional, mental and overall general wellbeing: at-home learning, classroom learning and a mix of at-home and classroom learning

The study found that elementary and junior high school students exhibited fewer emotional issues during at-home learning, while senior high school and vocational school students presented no differences in their emotional wellbeing between the three learning methods.

However, the study found that both junior and senior high school students showed signs of trauma from the mixed learning method, while vocational school students showed signs of trauma from at-home learning. 

Both elementary and junior high school students showed the highest level of mental wellbeing during at-home learning, while senior high school students recorded the highest mental wellbeing using the mixed learning method.

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