INOVASI has assisted 17 local governments in initiating and implementing various educational policies and programs. In this study, we focus on the following three policies: (1) Regulation by the Regent of Probolinggo No. 62 of 2018 on the Probolinggo District Literacy Movement (2) Regulation by the Regent of Probolinggo No. 18 of 2019 on Multigrade Management in Elementary Schools; and (3) Regulation by the Mayor of Batu City No. 93 of 2018 on Batu City as a Literacy City. The research explores the process of developing and implementing the three policies and predicts their sustainability by covering success stories, support, issues and challenges in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides valuable information for the studied policies’ stakeholders and other policy-makers in the field of education to understand the dynamics of policy implementation and sustainability in such a challenging context.
Conducted from March to June 2021, this study used online qualitative interviews with twenty-seven (ten females and seventeen males) informants ranging from supervisors, parents, librarians, education officials, other government officials, school committee members, and legislative members. It also employed focus group discussions with three different groups of teachers, three groups of principals, two groups of mixed madrasah principals and teachers, a literacy community. The study treated each of the three policies as a case characterised by its own unique system, including the policy concept, context, people, sources of support to provide a comprehensive description of each policy, its implementation, and its sustainability, and enabled constant comparative analyses across the three cases.