control. Civil servant teachers and lecturers were required to display “mono-loyalty” to the state as members of the state civil service corps ( _Korpri_ ). They were also required to deliver compulsory courses in the state ideology, _Pancasila_ (Leigh 1998; Nugroho 2005).

After the collapse of the New Order, driven by the new spirit of _reformasi_ , the country’s political elite introduced a range of constitutional and legislative changes that enhanced protection for the right to education—including by introducing minimum government spending requirements for the education sector (see below). Amid and following these changes, electorally attuned political leaders in various districts and municipalities newly empowered by decentralization began ramping up local education spending and introduced new programs of free basic education, a policy that had first been introduced at the national level in the 1970s but never properly implemented (Rosser and Sulistiyanto 2013). Political elites at the center followed suit, with the Yudhoyono government introducing a scheme of school grants (BOS) in 2005 aimed at reducing tuition and other school fees and formally reintroducing free basic education as government policy in 2009.

These moves were broadly endorsed by popular elements such as NGOs, parents groups, university student organizations, and independent teacher unions who saw them as a necessary corrective to New Order underfunding of education and the equity-related problems it had caused. They were also endorsed by the Indonesian teachers union (PGRI), an organization closely linked to the education bureaucracy at both the national and local levels, because of the opportunities that increased education spending presented in terms of teacher income and rentseeking opportunities for education officials (Rosser and Joshi 2013; Sucipto and others 2015). Finally, they appeared to be popular with the voting public, helping—along with a variety of other new social programs—to secure Yudhoyono’s reelection as President in 2009 (on this election, see Mietzner 2009).

At the same time, however, technocratic elements in the National Development Planning Agency/Ministry (Bappenas) and the Ministry of Education and Culture, working in conjunction with the World Bank and other donors, initiated a wide-ranging program of education policy reform inspired by notions of market rationality rather than human rights or popular appeal. This included the introduction of school-based management, moves to transform schools and higher education institutions into corporate bodies, new accreditation processes for schools and higher education institutions, moves to open the higher education sector to foreign higher education institutions, changes to the country’s national exam that turned it into a “high stakes” test (meaning students could not continue their education if they did not pass), a new teacher certification program, and efforts to promote a more efficient and equitable distribution of teachers within and between districts (Chang and others 2014; Rosser 2015a; Rosser and Fahmi 2016). While supportive of increased public spending on education and free basic education in principle, technocratic elements and their donor supporters also pushed back against the minimum public spending requirement and free basic education program because of concerns about their fiscal implications (see, for instance, _Bekasinews.com_ 2007; _Indopos_ 2007; and World Bank 2007).

This push for market-oriented reform encountered strong opposition from the predatory elements that had dominated the education system under the New Order. The politico-business and bureaucratic elements that ran the New Order successfully reinvented themselves in the post-New Order period by forging new alliances and making use of political parties (Hadiz, 2003, p. 593, 2010). In this context, predatory elements retained control over the education system. Moves to distribute teachers more efficiently and equitably consequently foundered in 12