Out-of-School Children (Anak Tidak Sekolah – ATS) remain one of the key challenges in Indonesia’s education sector. The National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) has issued a National Strategy for Handling Out-of-School Children (Stranas ATS). According to this strategy, there are 3.1 million children of upper secondary school age (16–18 years) who are not currently in school (Susenas, 2017). OOSC are defined as children aged 7–18 years who are not enrolled in school, have dropped out without completing a certain level of education, or who discontinue schooling without progressing to a higher level of education (Bappenas, 2020).

The ARPS Movement (Anak Rentan Agar Tidak Putus Sekolah – At-Risk Children to Prevent School Dropout) is an initiative launched in 2021 by the Directorate of Senior High Schools, Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology. The ARPS adopts a “movement-based” approach in which the Directorate facilitates and advocates to regional governments and educational institutions without providing financial assistance through cash transfers. Instead, this movement aims to strengthen awareness, initiative, and concrete action to prevent at-risk students from dropping out, so that preventive efforts become habitual and institutionalised in schools’ daily life and culture. To date, this movement has been implemented in approximately 700 schools across seven provinces.

Nusa Widyantara is supporting the Directorate of Senior High Schools to carry out a Sustainability Evaluation Study of the ARPS Movement. This empirical evaluation is essential to assess whether the movement-based approach is sustainable and has the potential to offer an effective and efficient policy alternative. The findings will also be used to improve and scale the programme towards long-term sustainability. The kick-off for module development and programme implementation was conducted in early May 2024.

We believe that mentoring for at-risk students must be provided in the form of continuous support, facilitation, inspiration, and motivation, rather than one-off or short-term initiatives. The objective is to enable students to discover relevant problem-solving alternatives through their own understanding. A strong personal relationship between teachers and at-risk students — characterised by mutual understanding, shared support, equality and non-hierarchical interaction — is key to successful mentoring. School principals play a critical role in facilitating and advocating for homeroom teachers, guidance and counselling teachers, and at-risk students. Schools can also involve other students in a peer-support system, provided it is accompanied by appropriate guidance and supervision from teachers.