West Sumbawa, 6 May 2024 – The quality of Early Childhood Education (PAUD) significantly impacts children’s future. According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek), parents who enroll their children in early education levels such as Playgroups (KB), Kindergartens (TK), and Raudatul Athfal (RA, Islamic pre-school) or equivalent forms are optimizing children’s growth during their “golden age” through the stimulation of physical, motor, cognitive, language, and socio-emotional aspects. This stimulation helps children to grow and develop optimally.
Achieving sustainable economic and social development requires the government, private sector, and the community to collaborate, ensuring that all early-aged children (1- 6 years) have access to quality early childhood education.
Highlighting the importance of early childhood education, PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara (“AMMAN”), one of Indonesia’s largest copper and gold mining companies, in partnership with the West Sumbawa Education and Culture Department and INSPIRASI Foundation, initiated the ‘PAUD Prestasi’ (Early Childhood Education with Computational Thinking) program in 2023.
This program focuses on improving human resources quality by developing pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills among PAUD students with a computational thinking approach. Computational thinking is a problem-solving method that applies structured thinking principles, potentially enhancing creativity, analytical skills, and innovation from an early age. Computational thinking also enables children to recognize problems in their surroundings, understand the issues, and develop appropriate solutions.
To date, the PAUD Prestasi program has reached more than 400 participants, including school principals, teachers, and students spread across 29 PAUD (5 public PAUD, 22 private PAUD, and 2 Raudhatul Athfal) in Sekongkang, Jereweh, and Maluk districts of West Sumbawa.
AMMAN’s Commitment to Quality Education Through PAUD Prestasi, AMMAN Supports Quality Childhood Education in West Sumbawa
The PAUD Prestasi program is one example of AMMAN’s commitment to enhancing the quality of early childhood education in KSB.
“Early childhood education is a crucial foundation for the nation’s future. We hope this program helps children in KSB access better education to reach their maximum potential,” said Priyo Pramono, Vice President of Social Impact at AMMAN.
After running for over a year, the PAUD Prestasi program has shown significant capacity improvement among involved parties with quantitative measurement methods and evaluations such as structured interviews, observations, skill tests, and document studies.
Principals: experienced an average knowledge increase of 33% in teaching computational thinking according to child development aspects, teacher and principal practices, leading assessments, conducting learning observations and feedback, classroom effectiveness, and evaluating learning implementation. Principals also experienced an average skills increase of 46% in leading initial assessment discussions, observing teacher teaching practices, leading reflections and development, and holding meetings with parents.
Teachers: saw an average knowledge increase of 32% in teaching computational thinking according to child development aspects, teacher and principal practices, initial assessments, and computational thinking lesson plans, effectively encouraging children to decompose and create algorithms in class, and computational thinking lesson plans. Teachers also gained an average skills increase of 28% in conducting initial assessments, effective teaching, self-reflection development, and engaging parents.
Students: on average, they saw a nine percent increase in their International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) scores from baseline to endline.
IDELA is a tool used globally for measuring student learning improvements in pre-literacy, pre-numeracy, socio-emotional, and motor skills.
“The collaboration between AMMAN, West Sumbawa Education & Culture Department, and INSPIRASI Foundation in this program has yielded highly satisfying results. We’ve seen significant improvements in the capacities of principals, teachers, and students in the 29 PAUDs involved in the program,” said Khusnarti, S.Pd., M.Inov., Head of the West Sumbawa Education and Culture Department.
Khusnarti added that these improvements were manifested not only in knowledge and skills aspects but also in parents’ understanding and active involvement in their children’s education. This indicates that the PAUD Prestasi program has successfully brought positive changes to the entire early childhood education ecosystem in West Sumbawa.
AMMAN hopes the PAUD Prestasi program can continue to reach more participants in 2024 and serve as a reference program implemented in other areas in Indonesia to improve Indonesia’s IDELA scores at the national level.
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