The influence of global education in Indonesia: PISA tests, different conceptions of national assessment and the policymaking process

This chapter begins by analyzing how 2020's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) potentially affected the introduction of a national assessment for Indonesia's national education system, the Minimum Competency Assessment (AKM). This study will assess Indonesia's PISA test results, the AKM, the policymaking process and the media's coverage of the Indonesian education system between 2019 and 2021, which ultimately led to the decision to introduce the AKM and scrap the existing assessment system. The study reveals that it was not a policy-borrowing process which was the key concern, but rather the lack of communication and different perceptions of assessment and education policies among domestic actors in the country and in the policymaking process. It then investigates different concepts of assessment (i.e., the assessment of the education system or actual student learning) held by different actors in cognizance of the need to modernize the existing education assessment system.