The Investment Ministry/Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) will establish an international standard Islamic boarding school in Lebak District, Banten Province.

“The boarding school will foster orphans throughout Indonesia for free,” Investment Minister/Head of BKPM Bahlil Lahadalia stated here on Thursday.

The boarding school will be built in Cileles Sub-district, Lebak District, Banten Province, spanning an area of 20 hectares, at a total cost of Rp89 billion.

The first phase of the school’s construction is targeted to be completed by December 2022.

“In the beginning, the facility is targeted to accommodate 400 children,” the minister noted.

According to Lahadalia, establishment of the Islamic boarding school aims to provide quality education that can generate superior economy experts and entrepreneur graduates, who can disseminate Islam through business.

The quality rather than the quantity of the graduates is being prioritized in the establishment of the boarding school.

Since it will be run in line with international standards, management of the school will involve Head of the Vice President’s Secretariat, Prof. Ahmad Erani, and Rector of the Bogor Agricultural Institute Prof. Arif Satria.

“We expect that graduates of the Islamic boarding school can enter various well-known universities,” Lahadalia stated.

In addition, he noted that construction of the boarding school aims to facilitate orphans to receive quality education.

The BKPM head remarked that establishment of the boarding school was driven by his difficult experiences of having to make an eight-kilometer (km) round trip to his junior high school on foot.

Due to the long trip, he was compelled to stop going to school as a result of which he did not complete his lower secondary education through formal education.

The minister later graduated from lower secondary education after attending peer group education (called ‘Kelompok Belajar’ or ‘kejar’), a nonformal education facilitated by the government for students, who do not learn from common schools.

“Thus, we hope that the international standard Islamic boarding schools can provide quality education to produce reliable and superior human resources, who also have noble character,” he added.

Source: Antara News