Those two problems ultimately lead to a lack of quality of the future labours when they enter the labour force once they graduate. Even so, there is no allocation towards improvement of national curriculum as they are currently depending on Kurikulum 2013. Former Minister of Education, Anies Baswedan, decided to overhaul the then-ongoing curriculum (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan 2006) because certain skills such as complex analytical skills, people management among others were important for the workforce to have to suit recruiters' demands, especially with an increase of automation and technological advancement. However, the latest reform did not solve the above mentioned recurring issue. Purnagunawan (2018) emphasises that Indonesia is the only country which formal education cannot even produce labours with even basic skills, such as literacy and numeracy based on his findings from OECD (2016), Di Gropello (2013), and Suryadarma (2011). This triggers a ripple of effects on its future workforce.
First, it increases the number of unemployed non-tertiary graduates, expanding the number of them living in poverty. Since most of them come from the less fortunate families that cannot afford tertiary education, they have to depend on formal education system as their only source to learn before entering the workforce. However, due to the poor public education system (shown based on the PISA performance indicators), they could not obtain adequate skills necessary to compete in the workforce. As such, they receive less opportunity to have a job compared to their tertiary counterparts (even less compared to those getting education overseas). Thus, they have a lower chance to get a formal employment due to preference toward tertiary graduates and therefore living in poverty. Purnagunawan (2018) found that although the overall unemployment rate decreases from 2010-2015, youth unemployment remains at all time high, especially among the senior high and senior vocational graduates. His findings confirm that students cannot rely on secondary education in order to enter the workforce as they are not adequate enough to guarantee them a formal job.
Secondly, poor education system may lead to a decrease of overall labour productivity in the economy. Labour productivity is one yet essential determinant in driving long and sustainable economic growth. However, Budiman (2014) reckons that Indonesia is losing its competitive edge against other ASEAN countries because of inadequate skills from the workforce itself which reduces firms' efficiency in producing the output for the economy. This stems from the fact that Indonesia's education system hinders the workforce's actual growth. Although firms have the ability to retrain their workers to fulfill the necessary skills, it translates into a higher production cost which eventually persuades them to choose to recruit those with already-equipped skills instead. Since only so little of them qualified for their prerequisites, this harms the overall labor productivity.
Data from Vandenberg and Trinh (2016) CEIC suggests that Indonesia is the only ASEAN country (out of the five) where the correlation between the educational attainment of the workforce and enterprise productivity is small and statistically insignificant. Eventually, poor education system not only increases structural unemployment, poverty, and health, it also affects the overall output production which sacrifices the firms' and also Indonesia's welfare as well due to fluctuation labor productivity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Indonesia's current education system is still harming the quality of its future labour force even after carrying out nine reforms, one more than Singapore the leading performers of PISA scores among ASEAN countries. This poor education system sacrifices not only students' current and future welfare, it also sacrifices the country and also the firms that have been the main force of economic growth which affects the sustainable economic growth. Recently, the newly-elected Minister of Education and Culture Nadiem Makarim proposed to reform the education system again, with erasing the current National Examination is the  most notable feature and replace with an assessment of the students' three essential skills; reading, Mathematics and Science. Hopefully, his reformation of the curriculum will also reform the quality of the future workforce and promote sustainable growth in the long run.
By Christian Anugrah Leonardo | Staff Divisi Kajian Kanopi FEB UI | Ilmu Ekonomi 2018
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Bibliography
de Ree, J., Muralidharan, K., Pradhan, M., & Rogers, H. (2017). Double for Nothing? Experimental Evidence on an Unconditional Teacher Salary Increase in Indonesia*. The Quarterly Journal Of Economics, 133(2), 993-1039. doi: 10.1093/qje/qjx040
French, J., French, A., & Li, W. (2015). The relationship among cultural dimensions, education expenditure, and PISA performance. International Journal Of Educational Development, 42, 25-34. doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.02.010
