When the Indonesian government first set about improving poor literacy levels in 2015 it regulated 15 minutes of reading for pleasure before the start of a school day.
Schools were energised, book displays and literacy festivals flourished, and while awareness of the idea of ‘literasi’ may have risen, the extent to which literacy learning is facilitated in the classroom generally isn’t clear.
Then, in the face of looming problems driven by the removal of face-to-face learning during the pandemic, the government took the opportunity to change the curriculum. Though largely absent from the Kurikulum 2013, the word ‘literasi’ is found substantively in the simplified Kurikulum Merdeka, introduced in 2022.
