Indonesia's education budgeting system denoting low adaptiveness: functionalism analysis

Purpose This study investigates the budgeting system in Indonesia, which has not been adapted to increase and equalise the funding allocation for primary school education. Furthermore, it analyses the causally adaptive failure in the budgeting system of the Government of Indonesia (GoI). Design/methodology/approach Our study employed semi-structured interviews, gathering in-depth insights from 24 relevant informants from the local government officials and auditors. Using Talcott Parson's structural functionalism as our theoretical approach, the authors analysed the research transcripts using the coding structure of Nvivo, capturing GoI's education budgeting systems holistically and enriching this study's findings derived from valid, credible and reliable research data. Findings This study finds deficiencies in the primary school education budgeting system: the identified integrative functions, polity as an organised system for directing various resources towards a collective goal, and the low justification of legitimacy. The findings indicate that the GoI needs to modify the regulations to enhance the adaptive capacity of budgeting functionalism. The findings have consequences for the Public-School Education Ministry in managing the budget allocation, indicating that the GoI needs to modify the regulations to enhance the adaptive capacity. This policy ensures that primary school students get the fund allocation from the GoI as a function of constitutional instruction. Originality/value This study provides knowledge regarding how most GoI's regional officers spend their mandatory budgets on infrastructure, disregarding the soft-skill ones. As they avoid transferring general allocation funds by formulating mechanistic allocation due to diminishing incentives, the regional officers are unreasonable when getting the special-fund-allocation transfer.