Jakarta : The COVID pandemic has exposed the deep divides within Indonesian society with many schoolchildren lacking the technology needed to take part in online school [File: Hotli Simanjuntak/EPA]

Jakarta, Indonesia – The coronavirus pandemic has forced hundreds of millions of children across the world to either adopt learning from home or drop out of school altogether, as the disease exacerbates sharp divides between the rich and poor.

In Indonesia, the lives of some 68 million young people – from pre-schoolers to higher education students – have been affected by COVID-19 over the last year, according to the Jakarta office of UNICEF.

Many Indonesians have found it difficult to participate in online learning due to unequal access to technology and Internet connectivity.

Jakarta-based newspaper journalist Agnes Theodora, 29, who together with 12 other reporters, has given more than 400 used smartphones and data packages from donors to hundreds of underprivileged families in Indonesia, found there was “an extraordinary digital inequality and divide” when the group began distributing mobile phones to students across the world’s largest archipelago in August last year.

“Many of them have to borrow their friend’s smartphone or borrow a neighbour’s smartphone, or even some of them cannot go to school at all because they do not have any gadget and have to visit the teacher in person [for face-to-face classes],” she told Al Jazeera.

“The problem is not only the difficulty in accessing a smartphone and buying the Internet quota, but the signal does not reach [some parts of Indonesia],” she added.

Even with the pandemic showing no signs of abating – Indonesia had more than 1,089,000 cases and more than 30,200 fatalities as of Monday – the government has now decided that schools can reopen – at least in some areas if local officials agree.
“It is important to note that since 2021 began, Indonesia’s status has changed to partially open, and Ministry of Education and Culture left the decisions regarding school reopening to local governments,” the UNICEF office in Jakarta said in an emailed statement