The government has announced that schools could reopen in January if local administrations, schools and parents agreed to resume classroom learning. 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 learnin...