Indonesia Still Has Hope for its Students to Become Environmental Changemakers
PISA 2025 finds Indonesian students show strong environmental commitment despite low environmental-science proficiency.
A recent report from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025 provides insight into the environmental agency of 15-year-old students in Indonesia. The assessment framework considers four dimensions: environmental-science proficiency, environmental attitudes, environmental commitment, and opportunities for environmental learning at school. None of these dimensions individually determines a student's environmental agency, as they all reinforce each other.
Indonesia scored below the OECD average in environmental-science proficiency, with only about 39.5% of students reaching Level 2 or higher. At Level 2, students are expected to understand human impacts on Earth systems, evaluate practical solutions to socio-ecological challenges, and reason about environmental risks. Students below Level 2 are deemed to lack the baseline level of environmental-science proficiency.
Indonesian students' environmental attitudes are different from the norm. They report very high personal capacity to generate environmental change and strong belief in collective efficacy. Around 94.4% of Indonesian students believe that working together can resolve environmental issues, and over 90% consider caring for the global environment important to them.
Environmental commitment is also high in Indonesia. Around 94.5% of students participated in at least one environmental activity in the previous year, while 92.5% expressed interest in contributing to environmental protection through future careers.
The fourth dimension, environmental learning opportunities at school, shows that Indonesian students receive considerable support from their teachers. Teachers introduce environmental issues, discuss solutions, provide research opportunities, and assess students' environmental knowledge. However, merely having these opportunities does not directly result in strong environmental awareness and agency, as PISA does not demonstrate a direct causal link.
Another striking finding is that many Indonesian students demonstrate strong environmental concern but still underperform in environmental-science proficiency. Approximately 54.7% of students care about the environment but remain below Level 2. This suggests that strong environmental concern does not always correspond with strong demonstrated environmental-science proficiency.
When comparing students, we see substantial inequalities in environmental-science proficiency. Higher-scoring students are often from advantaged backgrounds and reside in urban areas. Conversely, disadvantaged students and those from rural areas score significantly lower in environmental-science proficiency, with a difference of roughly 58 points.
Despite these disparities, Indonesian students continue to show high participation in environmental activities. About 92.7% of disadvantaged students reported engaging in at least one environmental activity, and 90.3% expressed interest in future careers focused on environmental protection. The report does not directly address why this gap exists, particularly the disconnect between environmental-science knowledge and environmental efficacy.
However, one clear takeaway from Indonesia is that strong willpower among students exists, regardless of their environmental-science proficiency.
Written by urgent.news from Tempo.co English's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
