The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) will be unveiling its results for 2018 sometime next year. When it does, one of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries that will come into focus is Indonesia.In the PISA results for 2015, Indonesia fared poorly in math, reading, and science compared to all the other ASEAN member states involved in the study.

Sofia Begum is a case study in the power of hope. Three months ago, armed vigilantes attacked the six-year-old’s village in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Sofia saw neighbors killed, an uncle wounded by gunfire, and her home razed.Miraculously, Sofia, her parents, and two younger brothers survived. After an arduous four-day journey that included evading militias and making a perilous river crossing, they reached safety in neighboring Bangladesh. “Now I want to be back in school,” Sofia tells me.

The arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) requires more investments in nurturing students in the Southeast Asian region today. This being said, education policies in the region need to be revamped to produce a future workforce that is fully prepared to take on a number of challenges. These challenges include inequalities, increasing economic interdependency, technological development such as automation, rapidly changing labour markets, and shifting geopolitics amongst others.

Education policies are a vital function in transforming the education landscape and configuring the learning outcomes of any nation. A prominent feature of a successful educational transformation is that it’s guided by a clear goal or vision. This would ideally be implemented through coherent planning, micro-management and a constant monitoring process.