Jakarta · Regulatory & Quality
If you have spent more than ten minutes researching international schools in Jakarta, you will have come across the term SPK. It stands for Satuan Pendidikan Kerjasama - Collaborative Education Unit - and it is the Indonesian government's legal classification for schools offering a foreign curriculum. Every school you would think of as "international" either holds SPK status or is working towards it.
That is the factual part. The practical part is more nuanced - and more useful.
Written by Mia Windsor · Originally published: 24 February 2026 · 7 min read
TL;DR
- SPK is an Indonesian government licence, not a quality mark - it tells you a school is legally registered to offer a foreign curriculum, nothing more
- The classification was introduced in 2014 and banned schools from using "international" in their names
- SPK status matters at the margins of the market - for established schools like JIS, BSJ, ISJ, and AIS, it is background paperwork
- What parents should focus on: teacher qualifications, foreign accreditations (CIS, Cambridge, IB authorisation, BSO inspections), and results
- New schools entering the market - like Wellington College - may operate without SPK for years while running a fully credible British curriculum
In this article
- What SPK is
- What SPK is not
- How schools get SPK status - and why it takes years
- What parents should focus on instead
- The three categories of school in Indonesia
- How to check a school's status
- FAQs
What SPK Is
In 2014, the Indonesian Ministry of Education issued Permendikbud No. 31/2014. The regulation created a formal licensing framework for schools offering foreign curriculums and, famously, banned the word "international" from school names. Jakarta International School became Jakarta Intercultural School. British International School Jakarta became British School Jakarta. The signage changed. The schools did not.
Under the SPK framework, a school offering a foreign curriculum must operate as a formal collaboration between an Indonesian educational institution (the LPI) and an accredited foreign education body (the LPA). The Indonesian partner needs A-grade national accreditation. The foreign partner must be recognised in its home country - Cambridge International, the IB, a British inspectorate, or equivalent.
SPK schools must also teach Indonesian students certain compulsory subjects: religious studies, Bahasa Indonesia, Pancasila and civic education. Foreign students take Indonesian language and cultural studies. Each school level - early childhood through upper secondary - is inspected and approved separately.
That is what SPK is: a government licence confirming that a school has jumped through the regulatory hoops required to offer a foreign curriculum in Indonesia.
What SPK Is Not
SPK is not a quality mark. It tells you nothing about the calibre of teachers in the classroom, the strength of exam results, the quality of pastoral care, or whether the school will get your child into a good university.
Plenty of schools hold SPK status and deliver a mediocre education. The licence confirms paperwork and partnerships - not outcomes.
And here is the part that trips up parents who take the regulatory framework too literally: a school can deliver a credible, high-quality international education without holding SPK status.
How Schools Get SPK Status - and Why It Takes Years
The SPK application process is slow. Indonesian regulations require new schools to open first as a national school, then progress to national-plus status, and then apply for SPK classification. The full process can take several years.
Take Wellington College, which has been signalling an opening in Jakarta since around 2022 and is currently targeting September 2026. Wellington is one of England's most prestigious independent schools. When it opens in Jakarta, it will not have SPK status. It cannot - the regulatory pathway does not allow a new school to launch with SPK licensing on day one.
Will Wellington be running an Indonesian national curriculum while it waits? Of course not. It will be delivering a British curriculum, staffed by British-qualified teachers, with the full weight of Wellington College's reputation and educational infrastructure behind it. Parents choosing Wellington will not be checking whether the school has completed its SPK paperwork. They will be looking at the teaching staff, the curriculum, the facilities, and the track record of the Wellington brand.
This is also where the Merdeka curriculum comes in. Indonesia's Merdeka Belajar ("Freedom to Learn") framework gives schools significant flexibility in how they structure their programmes. In practice, this means schools operating under a national or national-plus classification can incorporate substantial elements of a foreign curriculum - British, American, IB-aligned - without holding SPK status. The boundaries are more porous than the regulatory categories suggest.
The result is that Jakarta has a spectrum of schools running credible international programmes at various stages of the SPK pipeline. Some have held the licence for a decade. Some are mid-application. Some are brand new and years away from formal classification. SPK status tells you where a school sits in that bureaucratic queue - not whether it is a good school.
What Parents Should Focus on Instead
If SPK is background paperwork, what should you be looking at?
Teacher qualifications. Are the teachers qualified in the country whose curriculum the school claims to follow? A school offering a British curriculum should have British-qualified teachers. Ask directly - "What proportion of your teaching staff hold QTS or equivalent?" - and pay attention to whether the answer is specific or evasive.
Foreign accreditations. These matter far more than SPK status. Is the school an authorised Cambridge International centre? An IB World School? Has it been inspected by BSO (British Schools Overseas)? Does it hold CIS accreditation? These are the markers that universities, other international schools, and experienced expat families recognise. Our accreditation guide covers this in detail.
Exam results. Schools that publish IB scores, IGCSE results, or A-level grades are giving you something concrete to evaluate. Schools that keep results private make it harder for you to compare.
University destinations. Where do graduates go? This is the output that matters. A school's SPK status has zero bearing on whether its students get into good universities. The curriculum, the teaching, and the exam results do.
Track record and reputation. How long has the school been operating? What do other expat families say? What does the turnover of teaching staff look like? These signals are messy and anecdotal - but they are closer to reality than a government classification.
The Three Categories of School in Indonesia
For reference, the Indonesian system classifies schools into three buckets:
National schools follow the Indonesian national curriculum, taught in Bahasa Indonesia.
Embassy schools - the French School, German School, Japanese School, Korean School - are operated by or on behalf of foreign governments. They serve their own nationals and are exempt from SPK requirements.
SPK schools hold the government's formal licence to offer a foreign curriculum through a documented partnership between an Indonesian and a foreign institution. This covers JIS, BSJ, ISJ, AIS, NAS, ACG, NJIS, Binus, SIS, SPH, Mentari, and the rest of what most families call "international schools."
In practice, these boundaries are less rigid than they appear on paper. The Merdeka curriculum framework and the multi-year SPK application timeline mean that credible international programmes exist across all categories.
When SPK Status Does Matter
All of that said, SPK status is not irrelevant. There are two situations where it is worth checking.
Budget schools at the bottom of the market. If you are considering a school charging under $8,000 a year that describes itself as "international," verify what that means. Does it hold SPK status? If not, is it operating under Merdeka with a genuine foreign curriculum partnership, or is it using the word loosely? At the lower end of the fee range, the gap between marketing and reality can be wide.
Schools that have lost or failed to renew SPK status. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some SPK schools across Indonesia did not complete their re-registration and reverted to national school status. A few continued to market themselves as if nothing had changed. If a school held SPK status and no longer does, that is worth understanding - it may signal governance or financial problems beyond the paperwork itself.
The government's SPK e-services portal is at layananspk.pauddikdasmen.kemdikbud.go.id. The Association of Indonesian SPK Schools maintains a directory at spkindonesia.org. Both are worth a look if you have any doubt.
