Universal Education

Private school SIS Group has already made quality education more affordable and plans to make it even more so.

- Marella Putri

Indonesia will hit a demographic bonus by 2030, a period when the country’s population will be made up mostly of people of productive age. At the same time, Indonesia is also facing the global Fourth Industrial Revolution, where the application of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data is changing the way people live and work. According to the 2019 OECD Employment Outlook report released in April, in the next 10-20 years, 14% of jobs are at high risk of being fully automated, and 32% are at risk of significant changes. If today’s younger generation is not equipped with skills that answer the challenges in the coming era, the demographic bonus will transform into a burden.

Therefore, appropriate education that can compete internally and externally is important for Indonesian students, but a gap remains in the country. For instance, international schools with certified international curriculum and teachers, are often not affordable by those on lower-to-middle income, thus maintaining the significant social gap that exists in the country. This is the problem that Singapore Intercultural School (SIS), a group of private schools based in Indonesia, is solving.

Jaspal Sidhu, founder, and chairman of SIS is a Singaporean who has lived in Indonesia for 30 years, previously working as an engineer in the mining sector from Aceh to Kalimantan. He quit his career in mining because his father thought he should be working where he could have more of an impact on people. Reflecting on his life, Jaspal realized that it was a quality education that had brought him success. That was also why his father who worked as a security officer tried his best to give his children the best education he could afford.