Abstract
Investment in the construction of schools has been recognized as an important way of promoting the access to and enhancing the equity of education, as well as the fist step toward improving the quality of education in the developing countries. However, there are many schools which have failed to succeed in improvements in quality and are simply wasting their resources. This suggests that the increase in the quantity of schools should be accompanied with an improvement in quality. The Junior Secondary School Construction Project is the first and the largest investment by the Government of Japan in the area of basic education in Indonesia. Through this project, 596 junior secondary schools were constructed in as many as 12 provinces in three years. This article is intended to evaluate the accomplishment and the challenge of this large-scale project by examining in its degree of actual contribution to the promotion of education in these areas, and the factors which influence the improvement of educational outcomes.
