<![CDATA[Purpose – This article examines whether the extension of Program Indonesia Pintar (PIP), Indonesia's national student cash assistance program, to kindergarten is aligned with the structure of access inequality in early childhood education (ECE), locally known as Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD). It analyses PIP for kindergarten through an equity-oriented policy design lens, focusing on targeting adequacy, institutional compatibility, implementation feasibility, and equity responsiveness within Indonesia's mixed preschool provider system.Design/methods/approach – The study uses descriptive-analytic policy analysis based on secondary statistics and policy documents. Data were drawn from Statistics Indonesia (BPS), the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education of the Republic of Indonesia (Kemendikdasmen), the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia (Kemenag), PIP information portals, and recent ECE scholarship. Policy-problem fit was assessed by comparing participation inequalities, provider governance, financing logic, and implementation risks across the four analytical dimensions.Findings – The analysis indicates design-level policy-problem alignment, while avoiding claims of policy effectiveness. PAUD participation remains uneven across provinces and household expenditure groups, whereas national gender differences are comparatively small. In 2024/2025, Kemendikdasmen recorded 198,482 PAUD units and 6,825,425 pupils; 96.45% of units and 94.85% of pupils were private. At kindergarten level, 93.05% of units and 90.92% of pupils were private, and BPS recorded 31,232 Raudhatul Athfal (RA) under Kemenag. These patterns matter analytically because child-based assistance can follow eligible children into the providers families actually use, but it also depends on cross-system data integration, accountability, and local administrative capacity.Research implications/limitations – The article assesses policy alignment, not causal impact, because PIP for kindergarten is new and complete post-implementation data are not yet available. Public statistics also do not fully disaggregate private providers by religious, organizational, or community affiliation, and Kemendikdasmen and Kemenag datasets are not always directly comparable.Practical implications – Child-based assistance is designed to reduce family-side cost barriers, but its contribution depends on accurate targeting, registration, NIK-NISN matching, provider data updating, and cross-institutional coordination across public, private, community-based, and faith-linked providers. The policy also requires safeguards against administrative exclusion and uneven local implementation capacity.Originality/value – The article offers a bounded contribution to ECE financing and governance scholarship by showing how a national affordability policy is designed to operate in a plural, largely non-state preschool ecology in a Muslim-majority setting. Rather than presenting PIP for kindergarten as a completed success, it frames the policy as an equity-oriented design response whose effects require careful empirical monitoring.Paper type Research paper ]]>
