While his story was largely perceived as an unfortunate novelty by netizens, similar circumstances have occurred in other schools for years. As it stands, Azzam will likely not be the last to spend his school days without enjoying the company of classmates.

His enrollment is neither an isolated case nor a new phenomenon, according to experts, who attributed the problem to corruption in schools, lack of data transparency and persistent errors in education enrollment policies.

“This is not a new problem. It is happening in many small towns across the country,” said Satriwan Salim, coordinator of the Education and Teachers Association (P2G), on Tuesday.

“I am not sure whether the Surakarta government has evaluated the problem, but Central Java at large is notorious for it,” he said.

The issue has persisted since as early as 2017, when former education, culture, research and technology minister Muhadjir Effendy announced zoning requirements for the state school enrollment selection (PPDB) process.

Aimed to eliminate a phenomenon in which select state schools are regarded as “favorites” and more prestigious than others, Muhadjir’s provisions prioritized the entry of students living in proximity to a state school, reserving for them 90 percent of the total available seats.

Muhadjir’s successor, Nadiem Makarim, later modified the requirements and reduced the number of reserved seats to 50 percent as part of his Merdeka Belajar (Freedom to Learn) reforms package, amid protests from parents who felt disadvantaged by the previous version of the policy.

Despite the lower threshold, the enrollment system still has inherent problems that persist in spite of Nadiem’s modifications, said Satriwan. While state schools in bigger cities are now struggling to find a seat for every registrant in the immediate neighborhood, the opposite is experienced by schools in rural areas.

“[In places like] Surakarta, the pool of students enrolling in state schools is much smaller compared with the number of schools available. There are various factors at play. For one, parents may be more inclined to enroll their children in private schools,” said the educator.

“Another is that the number of students continuing their education from elementary to middle school, or from middle to high school, is simply less than the number of schools in the region.”

Solo endeavor

Since the start of the new academic year on July 11, many reports have surfaced describing dozens of schools in remote provinces and regencies struggling with the lack of students. In the East Java district of Magetan, for instance, a state elementary school only enrolled two new students this year, both of whom came from the same household.

Then, in Ponorogo regency, only two schools out of 580 successfully fulfilled the enrollment ceiling for the academic year – with one school only managing to enroll a single new student, who, like Azzam, has no choice but to learn solo.

Ina Liem, another education expert, said on Friday that not having classmates can negatively impact a child’s development of soft skills, such as leadership, social aptitude and sense of tolerance and collaboration.

“Elementary education is not only geared for the transfer of study materials, but also character building,” she said.

Ina suggested that this problem could be resolved more efficiently if the government was more diligent in mapping the student demography in smaller cities using predictive analysis. A low turnout should not come as a surprise if the government was on top of its data collection practices.

“The figures should be mapped,” she told The Jakarta Post. “The numbers should be open to the public as well, so that the problem can reveal itself and solutions can be learned.”

That this data has not been made available could be an indication of foul play, the education expert suggested.

The flipside

Meanwhile, state schools in bigger, more populous cities are struggling with the other side of the zoning coin: too few seats for too many students.

Satriwan explained that in Jakarta, for example, the pattern of school availability was similar to that of a pyramid; the higher the education level, the fewer schools are available. This means there are many elementary schools to choose from, but not so much for middle and high schools.

So while the PPDB program might effectively reduce the elitist “favorite” phenomenon, it does little to stem the rampant practice where parents “buy” their children seats at state schools as a result of their increasing rarity.

“Some schools, for instance, have maxed out on their capacity, but parents still insist on getting their children enrolled so they start scheming with the principals. This is the opposite of the Surakarta problem,” he said.

Ina suggested that corruption remained one of the biggest puzzle pieces in the country’s school enrollment problems. Since parents are fighting over the increasingly rare seats in state schools, those with enough money will have an edge over those who are not as financially well off.

“Parents should refrain from only thinking about themselves and their children,” she said.

In the end, there is no way out of the highly complex problem until the government puts its foot down and makes serious changes, Satriwan argued.

“The PPDB policy keeps presenting the same old problems: there are either too few students or too many. The education ministry is not serious enough about the policy. A thorough evaluation must take place,” he said.

The education ministry declined the Post’s requests for comment.