Representatives from INOVASI and the District Education Office of Southwest Sumba and West Sumba discussed concrete plans of each district for 2019 and 2020 at the FPPS (Forum Peduli Pendidikan Sumba, or Sumba Education Forum) meeting in Waingapu, East Sumba, in May 2019.
As a component of basic services, the education sector receives a sizeable portion from the development spending item, whether in the State Budget (APBN) or Regional Budget (APBD). The mandate in the National Education Law requires that allocation for education is 20% of the total budget. This has been carried out by the majority of local governments in Indonesia. However, education spending from that 20% portion has not been entirely in favor of addressing the issue of quality of learning.
This prompted the FPPS—with the support of the INOVASI program—to conduct an analysis on APBD spending on education functions for all districts in Sumba. The results of the analysis have proven that ABPDs of the four districts, especially in the 2016—2018 fiscal years, were not in favor of quality of learning.
From 2018 to 2019, the implementation of the INOVASI program in the four districts in Sumba has shown quite encouraging results. The results of the measurements that have been carried out showed that there was an increase in the number of students who mastered basic literacy in just eight months of the program’s implementation.
In West Sumba regency, for example, the initial measurement was only 14% of students who passed the given basic literacy test; in the final measurement, it increased to 43%. The same happened in Southwest Sumba and East Sumba, where each experienced an increase from 34% to 65% and 29% to 72%, respectively. Meanwhile, Central Sumba experienced the highest jump from 8% in the initial measurement to 35% in the final measurement.
The above measurement results have become the basis for the four districts in Sumba through FPPS to commit to disseminating the INOVASI program in non-partner schools. This commitment was also strengthened by the review results of APBD analysis on the education function spending that was conducted in 2018.
The budget for the dissemination of the INOVASI program was taken from reallocation of physical expenditures—construction or rehabilitation of buildings—to quality of learning, particularly direct expenditures that came from the General Allocation Fund (Dana Alokasi Umum, or DAU). The table below shows the increase in the spending allocation for quality of learning in the four districts from 2016 to 2019 (in rupiahs).
Regency | Year | Total | |||
| 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | ||
| East Sumba | 873,688,400 | 841,117,500 | 1,609,029,500 | 6,423,246,750 | 9,747,082,150 |
| Central Sumba | 3,086,795,500 | 5,804,506,500 | 5,779,875,200 | 8,906,666,100 | 23,577,843,300 |
| West Sumba | 1,495,274,000 | 248,842,000 | 1,552,467,500 | 3,058,536,650 | 6,355,120,150 |
| Southwest Sumba | 1,081,479,348 | 4,773,806,690 | 5,728,452,850 | 9,661,371,450 | 21,245,110,338 |
| Total | 6,537,237,248 | 11,668,272,690 | 14,669,825,050 | 28,049,820,950 | 60,925,155,938 |
The above table shows that the education budget allocation for quality of learning in the four districts has continuously increased. The increase is significant—especially from 2018 to 2019. The largest percentage increase is in the East Sumba regency budget, from Rp 1,609,029,500 to Rp 6,423,246,750, or 299%, whereas the percentage of increase in the other three districts ranges from 50% to 100%. Meanwhile, the largest amount of allocation was in Central Sumba regency with a value of Rp 23,577,843,300, followed by Southwest Sumba regency with a difference of around Rp 2 billion rupiah.
This increase in budget allocation was also used to disseminate the INOVASI program in the form of strengthening teacher capacity, especially basic literacy teaching skills in early grades through KKG (Kelompok Kerja Guru, or Teacher Working Group) and KKKS (Kelompok Kerja Kepala Sekolah, or Principal Working Group), procurement of appropriate reading books, integration of literacy programs into the RKJM (Rencana Kerja Jangka Menengah, or Medium Term Work Plan), RKT (Rencana Kerja Tahunan, or Annual Work Plan), and RKAS (Rencana Kerja dan Anggaran Sekolah, or School Activity Plan and Budget), and competitions to improve basic literacy skills. The four districts in Sumba allocated Rp 6.8 billion rupiah in the 2019 fiscal year and and Rp 8.1 billion in the 2020 fiscal year.
The detailed APBD budget allocations for the four districts to replicate the INOVASI program from 2018 to 2020 can be seen in the following table (in rupiahs).
| Regency | Budget for Replicating INOVASI Program | ||
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
| East Sumba | Rp 1,323,729,500 | Rp 1,242,912,500 | Rp 2,000,000,000 |
| Central Sumba | Rp 500,000,000 | Rp 2,345,121,000 | Rp 1,281,194,000 |
| West Sumba | Rp 345,000,000 | Rp 1,090,261,600 | Rp 3,099,339,000 |
| Southwest Sumba | Rp 600,743,000 | Rp 2,201,211,000 | Rp 1,731,125,498 |
| Total | Rp 2,769,474,518 | Rp 6,879,508,119 | Rp 8,111,660,518 |
The details above do not include support from the Village Fund as a result of initiating the INOVASI program together with the Village and Community Empowerment Office (Dinas Pemberdayaan Masyarakat dan Desa, or DPMD) of West Sumba regency, which amounted to Rp 3.4 billion from 63 villages. The focus of that funding was on training and mentoring village literacy cadres and providing four reading posts in each hamlet in the village.
In addition to that, INOVASI in the NTT province has also succeeded in initiating a program dissemination outside of Sumba, namely in the Nagekeo district on the island of Flores. This dissemination is budgeted for in the 2020 fiscal year in the amount of Rp 339,009,000. That fund will be used for selecting Fasda (fasilitator daerah, or regional facilitator), Fasda training, KKG planning, KKG implementation and mentoring, reflection during mid-program, monitoring and evaluation, and measuring the basic literacy skills of students in the early grades.