The impact of social safety net scholarships program to school dropout rates in Indonesia: The intention-to-treat analysis

This study aims to investigate the role of Indonesia’s Social Safety Net Scholarships Program to the school dropout rates in basic education in Indonesia using Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and the Intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis. Randomized controlled trials often suffer from two major complications, i.e., noncompliance and missing outcomes. One potential solution to this problem is a statistical concept called intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis. One of the challenges of estimating the effect of the JPS program is the non-random allocation of the scholarships. The results showed that the JPS scholarship received by boys and girls per 100 children is proven to be effective in reducing the school dropout rates in basic education, given that levels of education are very vulnerable to dropping out of school as a result of the impact of the economic crisis, particularly in junior secondary school. Meanwhile, the JPS scholarships received by boys more effective to reduce school dropout rates than girls in reducing the school dropout rates, considering that boys are more involved during the economic crisis. The findings were the same in Java and Bali that the average number of boys per 100 children who received JPS scholarship has shown a more significant share in reducing the total dropout number compared to those who are outside the Java and Bali areas. Thus, it will reduce the households that tried to offset the impact of the economic crisis with a variety of coping strategies, especially using boy’s child labor in Java and Bali. Although the JPS scholarship effectively reduces the school dropout rates in basic education, but the influence is still felt inadequate. Therefore, the government needs to fix the target criteria for scholarships recipients to be more accurate and on target with the latest data update. This is important because accurate targeting will determine the effectiveness of the program. Furthermore, it has poor selection criteria carried out by the committee schools, therefore, it needs to be fixed in order to avoid any irregularities.