Magelang, January 23, 2024 — The President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, conveyed a message to all students to make good use of the assistance from the 2024 Indonesia Pintar Program (PIP). He made this statement during the Handover of PIP Assistance for the year 2024 at the Samapta Sports Arena, Magelang, Central Java, on Monday (22/1). In his speech, President Jokowi expressed gratitude that the recipients of PIP assistance this year reached 18.6 million students.

In 2024, the government provides PIP assistance for Elementary School (SD) students amounting to Rp450,000 per year, and Junior High School (SMP) students receive Rp750,000 per year. Specifically, High School (SMA) and Vocational High School (SMK) students will receive Rp1,800,000 per year. “Through this PIP assistance, I hope it can make students more enthusiastic about learning and aspiring to continue their education to a higher level,” said President Jokowi.

President Jokowi emphasized that PIP assistance aims to meet the needs of students in acquiring knowledge at school. Therefore, Jokowi asked students to be wise in managing the PIP assistance funds that have been provided. “In addition to PIP, high school students who want to continue to higher education are very open to receiving assistance from the Smart Indonesia Card (KIP) for College,” he added.

The distribution of PIP assistance has been carried out by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) through the Finance Service Center (Puslapdik). The Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Mendikbudristek), Nadiem Anwar Makarim, reported that as of November 23, 2023, the distribution of PIP had reached 100 percent of the target, which had been distributed to 18,109,119 recipients.

“Every year we target the distribution of PIP to 17.9 million students with a budget of 9.7 trillion. This year, Kemendikbudristek added targets for high school level by 567,531 students and vocational high school level by 99,104 students. The addition of the number of targets coincided with the increase in the assistance unit, which was originally Rp1,000,000, becoming Rp1,800,000 for high school and vocational high school students,” said Nadiem.

Minister Nadiem stated that with the spirit of Merdeka Belajar (Freedom to Learn), Kemendikbudristek continues to strengthen collaboration and mutual assistance with local governments and educational units. He also expressed his gratitude to the local governments of Central Java and Magelang City for their successful collaboration in distributing PIP assistance and implementing the Merdeka Belajar breakthrough. “We do this spirit to ensure that the distribution of PIP assistance is more guaranteed in terms of accuracy of targets, time, quantity, and utilization,” he said.

Furthermore, Mendikbudristek emphasized that they would continue to improve the quality of the PIP program’s implementation as part of the effort to equalize the rights and quality of education, so that all Indonesian children can benefit from the program.

Regarding the accuracy of the PIP assistance targets, the Head of Puslapdik, Abdul Kahar, stated that the PIP recipient targets are sourced from three data sets: the Integrated Social Welfare Data (DTKS) verified by the Ministry of Social Affairs (Kemensos). This DTKS data is then matched with Basic Education Data (Dapodik) to check the presence of the students in school. In addition, since 2023, Puslapdik has also matched the data with the Data on the Interest of Extreme Poverty Elimination (P3KE) obtained from the National Population and Family Planning Agency (BKKBN). “With P3KE data, it is expected that the accuracy of the PIP assistance targets will be much better because, fundamentally, the data from BKKBN is based on families,” Kahar said.

Also present at the event were 1,000 students, consisting of 400 elementary school students, 300 junior high school students, 150 vocational high school students, and 150 high school students. One of the recipients of PIP at the vocational high school level, Neisya Cantika Putri, had the opportunity to have a dialogue with President Jokowi. She stated that she has been receiving PIP assistance since elementary school.

“The benefits of this PIP assistance I really feel, especially to meet school needs, such as books, shoes, bags, and others. And also, in my opinion, PIP has helped many less fortunate Indonesian children and serves as motivation for us as students to continue to higher levels of education,” said Neisya, a twelfth-grade student at SMK Citra Medika.

The benefits of PIP assistance are also felt by Benedictus Fergie Eleazar Andika Putra, who is receiving PIP for the second time this year. According to Fergie, PIP is very helpful in meeting school needs and activities. “In my school, I really like the Indonesian language subjects because with that, I can create and recite poetry. In addition, I am also actively playing gamelan at school. PIP assistance makes it easy for me to fulfill all these activities,” exclaimed Fergie, an eighth-grade student at SMP Negeri 1 Magelang.

In line with Neisya and Fergie, the recipient of PIP assistance at the elementary school level, Nova Faris Setiawan, is very enthusiastic about participating in this event. “I am very happy to receive this PIP assistance; I will use this assistance fund to go to school and achieve my dream of becoming a soldier in the future,” concluded Faris, a fifth-grade student at SD Negeri Kramat 5 Magelang.