Improving school capacity building has
become one of the major themes in research on educational
effectiveness. This study investigates the implementation
of the International Standard School (SBI) policy in
Indonesia which can be seen as an example of the efforts of
a particular country to improve school capacity building.
Disappointingly little is understood about people’s perception
about educational activity, in this case, pertaining
to international standard schools. Using the program
coherence dimension of a capacity building framework, a
qualitative study was conducted in a secondary school
located in a small region in West Java, Indonesia, that is
involved in the program. This study found that the interpretation
of the SBI policy was changing, and that establishing
international standard classrooms is the salient
aspect of the implementation of the policy. This study
revealed that becoming an SBI school has positive consequences
with regard to the acknowledgment of its quality
by the central government. One consequence is that the
SBI School can collect from parents extra funds amounting
to about ten times more than the school receives from the
central government. The document analysis reveals the SBI
School’s major difficulty in fulfilling the ‘international
requirements’ is the mastery of the English language by
their teachers.

EB00000002515K

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• In Search of the Excellent School: A Case Study of an Indonesian International Standard School in Improving Its Capacity Building