<![CDATA[This study examines how families living through Indonesia’s New Order school expansion experienced the arrival of new primary schools and decided whether their children would attend them. While previous studies have documented the construction of more than 61,000 Presidential Instruction (Inpres) primary schools between 1973 and 1978 and their long-term effects on schooling and wages, less attention has been given to how families responded to this expansion at the time. The study employs Kuntowijoyo’s historical method to analyse presidential instructions, a regional field report from West Sumatra, provincial funding studies, and government statistics. The sources were examined in digitized form and assessed through external and internal criticism before interpretation. The analysis focuses on three dimensions: family motives, regional variation in participation, and local explanations of children’s presence or absence from school. The findings indicate that cultural capital, rational choice, and parental aspiration each explain aspects of participation in Inpres primary schools, but none fully accounts for the available evidence. The central finding is a substantial documentary imbalance: official decisions concerning school construction and location are extensively recorded, whereas family reasoning and children’s actual attendance are rarely documented. This finding implies that assessments of large-scale educational expansion should distinguish between the provision of educational infrastructure and its social uptake. It also highlights the importance of incorporating local and family-level evidence when evaluating the social consequences of state-led school expansion.]]>
