Children out of school in four new provinces in the Papua region reached 314,606. This data is based on a study by researchers from the University of Papua.

University of Papua demography researcher Agus Sumule, when contacted from Jayapura, Papua, said that as many as 314,606 children were not in school spread across Central Papua, Mountain Papua, South Papua and Southwest Papua. These four provinces will only be expanded in 2022.

Agus explained that the study of data on children not attending school came from the Regional Education Balance prepared by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology. Central Papua has become a new autonomous region with the highest number of children who are not in school when compared to the other three new provinces, namely 95,380 people.

The number of out-of-school children in Papua’s mountains reached 95,022 people and South Papua 92,988. Meanwhile, the number of children who do not go to school in Southwest Papua is 31,216 people.

The average length of schooling in Mountain Papua is only 3.47 years, Central Papua 5.27 years, and South Papua 7.28 years. Southwest Papua with the highest average length of schooling of 7.90 years.

“Children do not go to school because they have dropped out of school or have not attended school at all since elementary school. “This can be seen from the average number of years of schooling in these four new provinces which has not yet reached 9 years,” said Agus.

He said there were a number of factors that caused the number of children not to go to school in these four provinces to be high. These factors include the lack of infrastructure and the number of teachers.

Based on the results of his study, continued Agus, Mountain Papua lacks 4,272 teachers, Central Papua 3,331 teachers, and South Papua 3,167 teachers. Meanwhile, Southwest Papua still needs 2,798 teachers.

“The government in these four provinces must prioritize quality education services for communities in remote areas. “One of the efforts is to equip each school with adequate facilities and sufficient and professional teachers,” said Agus.

Meanwhile, Head of the Regional Planning, Development, Research and Innovation Agency for Central Papua Province, Eddy Way, said that his party had prepared a number of programs to improve education services in Central Papua. This is in accordance with the Smart Papua vision launched by the Central Papua Provincial Government.

“We have prepared a number of programs that rely on two indicators in the education sector. “Both are strengthening the quality and access to education,” said Eddy.