November 21, 2025
JAKARTA – Anindita Wirawan, a 40-year-old mother of three in South Jakarta, is among the many parents voicing renewed alarm over bullying after a string of recent cases across the country, some ending in death, rekindled public grief and anger.
“As a parent, reading the news lately has been heartbreaking. A school is supposed to be a safe place for children to learn, but it no longer feels that way,” she told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Anindita was referring to the recent case of a 13-year-old student who died as a result of alleged bullying.
MH, a student at SMPN 19 South Tangerang junior high school in Banten, died on Sunday, around a month after he sustained a severe head injury when classmates allegedly struck him with a chair.
What unsettled her the most was the failure of schools to protect its students, Anindita added.
“I don’t know what parents can realistically expect from the government in preventing bullying. But schools should be the first line of defense. This is negligence,” she said.
Read also: Nationwide school safety in spotlight after SMAN 72 Jakarta blasts
Ten days earlier on Nov. 7, an explosive incident at SMAN 72 Kelapa Gading high school in North Jakarta injured 94 people, including a 17-year-old student enrolled at the school who has been named a suspect in the ensuing police investigation.
Media reports said the teen was a bullying victim who had approached his teachers for help, which the school has denied.
A handful of other cases emerged across the country in September. In Central Java, a 12-year-old in Grobogan and a 9-year-old in Wonosobo died in separate incidents that involved physical assault by fellow students. In Lampung, a 13-year-old was fatally stabbed with a pair of scissors while at school.
As public anxiety rises, more and more parents are demanding firm and visible action from authorities.
“I cannot help but worry about how little protection children seem to have against bullying these days,” said Heti Agustiawati, 40, whose daughter is in the third grade at a South Tangerang school.
“Education authorities, be it schools, local education agencies or even the central government, need to do more to keep children safe, both in and outside school,” she said.
New task force
On the sidelines of a work visit to Bekasi, West Java, President Prabowo Subianto told KompasTV on Monday that bullying was an issue “we must address”, with a video clip of his remarks posted to the broadcaster’s YouTube channel on Nov. 18.
In the same clip, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Abdul Mu’ti says he plans to tackle the problem through a revised version of a 2023 regulation on establishing anti-violence and anti-bullying teams at schools.
“We will form teams that use a more humanistic, comprehensive and participatory approach, bringing in parents, students and the community, so that the violence we have seen is not repeated,” Mu’ti said, without providing further details on the teams’ composition or function.
Introduced by then-education minister Nadiem Makarim, the 2023 regulation mandates setting up teams at schools to provide oversight and reporting channels as a means to prevent physical, psychological and sexual violence.
Each team must have at least three members, including teachers and parents, and falls under a regional task force comprised of local education, social affairs and child protection officials.
Read also: Student, 13, dies following alleged school bullying incident
Digging same hole?
However, Ubaid Matraji, national coordinator of the Network for Education Watch Indonesia (NEW Indonesia), has warned that the government risked repeating past mistakes if it merely revised a regulation without first assessing deeper structural weaknesses.
While Nadiem’s school-based teams and regional task forces looked sound on paper, he said, they frequently faltered in fulfilling their functions because members were overburdened, inadequately trained and lacked the funding or authority to act effectively.
“We do not lack regulations. What we lack is on-the-ground implementation and oversight. Civil society participation in these teams is almost nonexistent. If the solution is just to revise the rules, I doubt it will prevent violence” in a meaningful way, Ubaid said on Tuesday.
Aris Adi Leksono of the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) has called for a broader approach in tackling school violence, arguing that prevention cannot rest on education authorities alone.
He urged the government to provide embedded services for violence prevention, case handling and recovery at schools by regularly deploying psychologists and social workers from local agencies to intervene when students showed troubling behavior.
Aris also noted the lack of attention to real challenges that contributed to insufficient mental health support for students.
“There are still regions with too few psychologists and social workers. Sectoral egos among local agencies are also high, making collaboration difficult. These are the challenges the central government must address, and all it takes is [political] commitment,” he said.