aiming to implement its 12-year compulsory education program. Of all these initiatives, the most beneficial program in terms of improving school participation was the _SD Inpres Program_ . The _SD Inpres Program_ started with the construction of thousands of new elementary schools. Through this program, elementary schools had to be built in every village to help children to go to school. In the period 1973-83, using _Inpres_ funding, 136,140 new schools were built, 570,000 schools were renovated, and 697,180 teachers were assigned (Tilaar, 2015). Based on the results of various Population Census, this effort increased school participation for children aged 7-12 during the period 1971-81 by 20 percentage points, or up to around 81 percent. Gelander (2012) found that _<mark>SD Inpres program</mark>_ <mark>exposure significantly increased schooling both for men and for women, but women benefitted more from the program than men.</mark> At the national level, the GPI in school participation conveys that there is no gender disparity in favor of males, but sub-nationally there is considerable variation in gender disparity, with girls at a disadvantage in many districts and boys at a disadvantage in others. This condition holds across all education levels. For example, Kotamobagu has a GPI for the NER at primary level of 1.15, which indicates that enrollment favors females. Meanwhile, in Central Buton, West Sulawesi, the GPI for the same category is 0.8, which indicates the gender parity favors males. At junior secondary level, Wonosobo, Central Java, has a significant gender gap, with the NER for females at 85 percent, while the NER for males is 64 percent. However, we find the reverse pattern in Wajo, South Sulawesi, with the NER at junior secondary for females at only 46 percent, while the NER for males is 72 percent.<sup>18</sup> These magnitudes of variation are also observed at senior secondary and higher education levels in districts across the country. However, it is important to note that the availability of a senior secondary school and a university in a district/city could influence the enrollment rates at the respective level.

In some communities in Indonesia, cultural norms dictate that a woman’s place is confined to the home, while the role of men is to be the main breadwinner and head of the household. In these communities, girls may not have as equal opportunities as boys for schooling, particularly among poorer families (USAID, 2013). Daughters are sometimes perceived to be less valuable once educated because they will be part of their husband’s family once married; this perception may lead some households to prefer to send their sons to schools, especially for poor households (Ihromi, 1995).

Interview results from field visits offer different explanations, including that parents may prefer to enroll their female children rather than their male children in pre-primary school, because girls are perceived to enjoy school more and have fewer behavioral challenges. For example, the staff of the Directorate General of Education in Banjarbaru, who also has children in school, suggested a few reasons why there are more girls in pre-primary in her district, noting that there are more girls in the population, girls like school more than boys, and girls tend to join playgroups before kindergarten at higher rates than boys. She also noted that it is possible that boys do not join kindergarten and go straight to primary. While the official age for entering primary school is 7 years of age, in many cases parents enroll their children of both genders at age 6, particularly if their child went to pre-primary or attended a play group. Parents also said they often enroll girls earlier in primary school because they are ready for school sooner than boys.<sup>19</sup> Children who are enrolled before age 7 are categorized as early entrants (EE) in primary school. This group usually continues to be early entrants when they reach junior and senior secondary schools. Susenas data from 2011-15 show that the average EE rate is between 25.78 to 27.13 percent. These figures indicate that more than one-fourth of children are not accounted for in the NER calculation, which excludes children whose age does not match their expected grade. The more recent data in Susenas 2019 show that the EE rate for girls (22.03 percent) is more than 2 percentage points higher than for boys (19.78 percent). This

> 18 Susenas, 2018. 19 In one school visited for this study, children were tested to determine if they are ready or mature enough to start school.

8