Education, Culture, Research and Technology Minister Nadiem Makarim and three of his ministerial colleagues previously set out requirements for schoolchildren to resume classroom instruction nationwide, after about a year-and-a-half of distance learning that authorities have deemed ineffective.

Under a joint ministerial decree issued on Dec. 21, 2021, all schools, whether private, public or religious, are required to resume classroom learning by the second semester of the 2021/2022 academic year.

But with Indonesia reporting 92 new cases of the Omicron strain on Monday, which brought the national tally for the highly contagious variant to 506 cases, the government is feeling increasing public pressure to scale back its policy.

Of the reported case figures, 84 were locally transmitted.

The uptick in Omicron cases is thought to have resulted in a higher daily national caseload, which crept up to 802 on Tuesday, the highest in close to three months.

But the education ministry’s director general for early childhood, basic and secondary education, Jumeri, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday that authorities had no plan to call off the “back to school” mandate.

“If there are COVID-19 infections, they will be handled case by case, following the standard operational procedures that we have set out in the joint decree,” he said.

Regions divided

Jakarta, one of the administrative regions most impacted by the Omicron strain, reported 412 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest in over four months.

And while the spike in cases is mainly thought to have been caused by an influx of Omicron-exposed travelers returning from overseas, a number of schools in the city have also begun reporting COVID-19 transmission during in-person instruction.

A student of SMA 71 state high school in East Jakarta is reported [link2] to have tested positive with the Omicron strain, although it remains unclear whether the student in question was infected within or outside school premises.

The capital’s rising caseload has caused authorities to shut down seven schools reporting transmission of the virus, although Deputy Governor Ahmad Riza Patria said on Thursday that the administration was still planning to proceed with full-capacity learning at school.

“We aren’t going to close all of the schools, since Jakarta still fulfills the requirements for in-person learning at full capacity,” he was quoted by Kompas.com as saying. “Only schools with confirmed cases [will be shuttered].”

Only schools in regions currently under the most lenient levels of community activity restrictions (PPKM) – that is, levels 1 and 2 – are obliged to resume in-person teaching.

Jakarta is observing level 2 curbs, based on current data, but a spike in the caseload could still change this.

In contrast, several of Jakarta’s satellite cities – Bekasi, Depok and Bogor in West Java – have moved to delay a return to full-capacity teaching at school. Surakarta, Central Java, also called for a gradual return to classroom learning.

Acting Bekasi city mayor Tri Ardhianto said on Monday that the city’s administration had decided to call off all at-school learning in order to prioritize health concerns amid the rise in Omicron cases in Jakarta, Kompas.com reported.

Meanwhile, the cities of Depok and Bogor have decided to postpone the mandate in order to focus on efforts to vaccinate children.

Child vaccination key

Since schools started making the transition back to classroom learning, the Education and Teachers Association (P2G) has found that numerous schools around the country have been guilty of health protocol violations, which the group says is often due to a lack of oversight by local education agencies.

“We have received reports, including from Jakarta and other areas, that school canteens have secretly been opened, despite it being banned [in the joint decree]. Students have failed to maintain safe distances from one another, and some classes were found to have no open ventilation,” Zanatul Haeri of P2G said on Wednesday.

The association urged the government to reconsider its nationwide back-to-school push, particularly amid the lagging vaccination rate among minors, especially for children aged 6-11, which started just last month.

Separately, pediatrician Piprim Basarah Yanuarso, who heads the Indonesian Pediatric Society (IDAI), also called on the government to complete the inoculation of students, teachers and educational staffers before returning to full-capacity classroom learning.

In one of the group’s recommendations issued earlier this month, the IDAI suggested that in-person learning for minors should only resume at 50 percent capacity, while anyone younger than six should only be online educated.

Meanwhile, Zubairi Djoerban, head of the Indonesian Medical Associations’ (IDI) central board COVID-19 task force, said that the joint decree was basically obsolete.

He said the government should have kept online learning as an option – rather than making in-person learning mandatory – to adjust to the COVID-19 situation.

“The joint ministerial decree was signed on Dec. 21 and its contents might have been relevant at the time but if they are applied to the current situation, they are no longer appropriate,” Zubairi said recently, as quoted by Kompas.com.