ABSTRACT
Since 2002, school-based management (SBM) has been put into action in Indonesia through school committees (Komite Sekolah, SCs) that were created after a new decree was issued that year. In 2005, an additional dimension was added to SBM in Indonesia when a school block grant program became part of official nationwide policy (as opposed to being a program primarily supported by donors). This additional dimension was a program—known as the School Operational Grant Program (Bantuan Operasional Sekolah, or simply BOS)—built on the experiments with block grants that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s with assistance from international organizations (see Chapters 5 and 6). This chapter details the key features and guiding logics of the BOS program before then clarifying how the combination of SBM and BOS have worked in practice—and with what implications. The final section explains the challenges that this approach has experienced. As with chapter seven, the analysis in this chapter is guided by drawing on realist evaluation, systems theory, and anthropological sensibilities, which, as explained in Chapter 2, emphasize the social circumstances, institutional context, political drivers, cultural norms, and wider infrastructural constraints in which the reforms were implemented.
