Socioeconomic Status, Perceived Quality, and Public Evaluation of the School Zoning Policy: Evidence from a Mid-Sized City in Indonesia

Abstract

From 2017 until the New Student Admission System (SPMB) replaced it in 2025, Indonesia distributed public-school places largely by residential proximity under the zoning scheme. Evaluations of the policy have almost always been written from the administrative side, so how ordinary residents judged it has remained largely unmeasured. This study asks how the public in a mid-sized Indonesian city rated the benefit of zoning and whether that judgment tracked household socioeconomic position. Using a multistage survey of 393 residents across seven sub-districts fielded in May 2024, we fitted stepwise ordered logistic models and carried out an Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition. None of the socioeconomic variables—income, education, age, or gender—predicted the rating. Two neighborhood-level perceptions did: perceived school quality (OR = 3.23; p < 0.001) and perceived affordability (OR = 2.79; p < 0.001). The decomposition placed the evaluation gap between lower- and higher-income groups at a negligible 0.038 point on a five-point scale, whereas ratings varied sharply by location (F = 7.16; p < 0.001). Residents therefore seem to weigh zoning against what is visible and affordable in their immediate surroundings rather than against their class position. The Policy Feedback Theory prediction that perceptions stratify by social standing appears to hold only where social polarization is wide enough—a condition mid-sized cities seldom satisfy. In practice, winning public support for SPMB will depend more on making nearby schools genuinely better and cheaper than on communication campaigns.