Education Budget Mandatory Spending and Student Nutrition: MK 52/PUU-XXIV/2026

The Constitutional Court decided case 52/PUU-XXIV/2026 on 30 July 2026 in a judicial review of statutory content brought by an individual petitioner, Rega Felix. The petition tested Law 20 of 2003 on the National Education System and Law 17 of 2025 on the State Budget for Fiscal Year 2026. Specifically, it challenged Pasal 49(1) of Law 20/2003 and its Elucidation, together with Pasal 22(3) of Law 17/2025 and its Elucidation, and asked the Court to read the constitutional education budget as covering a narrower set of expenditures than the Government had treated it as covering. The proceeding also included a provisional application, which the Court addressed separately in its operative ruling.

Legal Reasoning

The House of Representatives, in the statement recorded in the decision, began from Pasal 31(4) of the 1945 Constitution, which states that the State prioritises the education budget at no less than 20 per cent of the state and regional budgets to meet the needs of national education. It quoted the Court's earlier reasoning in Decision 3/PUU-XXII/2024, which had already interpreted that provision as admitting no reading other than that the State must prioritise education spending in the APBN and the APBD, and that the priority must be at least 20 per cent. On that reading, the constitutional text fixes a floor and nothing more.

The House also relied on the same earlier decision, in which the Court had characterised a complaint that unequal allocation of basic-education funds contributes to school dropout rates as implementative and administrative in nature. Deciding how education funds are distributed across regions according to sectoral priorities and needs falls to government policy. The Court stated that the Constitution regulates only the minimum education budget, while the detail of what that budget is spent on forms part of the policy set by the Government and the legislature through the process of drafting the APBN and the APBD.

The House then read Pasal 49(1) of Law 20/2003, which allocates education funds at no less than 20 per cent of the APBN and APBD without exhaustively itemising the components of education financing. According to the House, that absence of enumeration is not a normative vacuum. It is a deliberate design choice that leaves flexibility to regulate education financing in step with an education system that is dynamic and integrated. Determining which programmes are funded, and in what order of priority, therefore belongs to the legislature acting through the annual budget law, and the Government and the House hold constitutional authority over budget policy provided they remain within the corridor of the education mandatory-spending obligation. Similar questions about the reach of the same budget statute were raised in a separate challenge to the 2026 State Budget Law.

The House also observed that budget allocation in the APBN is now organised by function rather than by sector, so the scope of education mandatory spending depends on how the function of the education system itself is understood. Read in that light, mandatory spending cannot be confined to classroom instruction. It extends to the education ecosystem as a whole, and no rigid or exclusive list of qualifying expenditure types can be laid down without contradicting the integrated character of the system.

For the content of that framework the House relied on Government Regulation 48 of 2008 on Education Funding, as amended by Government Regulation 18 of 2022. Under those rules, education costs comprise the costs of education units, the costs of administering and managing education, and students' personal costs, with education-unit costs in turn covering investment, operational costs for personnel and non-personnel items, education cost assistance, and scholarships. The House read this structure as imposing no fixed restriction on the categories of need that education funding may support.

From that premise the House connected student nutrition to the education cost framework. Meeting students' basic needs, including nutritional needs that affect physical readiness and capacity to learn, bears directly on the effectiveness of the educational process, because students in good health and nutritional condition are better able to follow instruction. Confining education funding to activities narrowly perceived as classroom learning would risk obscuring the State's responsibility for education financing as a whole and would narrow the Government's room to budget according to actual needs. The House accordingly treated nutritional provision as an inherent component of the national education system rather than an external factor. The Court did not adopt that view. It held the petition obscure as to Pasal 49(1), because it ignored the reading given to that provision in Decision 24/PUU-V/2007; it found the challenges to the Elucidation of Pasal 49(1) and the Elucidation of Pasal 22(3) moot, those texts having already been dealt with in Decisions 011/PUU-III/2005 and 40/PUU-XXIV/2026; and it rejected the challenge to Pasal 22(3) itself by applying its reasoning in Decision 40/PUU-XXIV/2026, which holds that the meals programme should be financed separately, outside the education budget. The same posture of deference to legislative choice appears in another 2026 constitutional review decided by the Court.

The Ruling

On the provisional application, the Court rejected the petitioner's request. On the merits, it declared the petition inadmissible so far as it concerned the review of Pasal 49(1) and the Elucidation of Pasal 49(1) of Law 20 of 2003 on the National Education System, and the Elucidation of Pasal 22(3) of Law 17 of 2025 on the State Budget for Fiscal Year 2026. The Court rejected the petition for the remainder. No dissenting opinion was recorded.

Read the full decision in the official record.

Methodology: This memo summarises the official decision text and is not legal advice; report corrections to contact@crpg.id.

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Correction (27 September 2026): this post was checked against the official text of MK 52/PUU-XXIV/2026 and corrected. What changed: DPR statement point r; The Court applied 40/PUU-XXIV/2026 [3.17.2]: meals must be financed outside the education budget; Pasal 49(1) obscure, Elucidations moot, Pasal 22(3) upheld; This is the DPR's statement (point k), which quoted 3/PUU-XXII/2024; the Court's reasoning does not cite that decision; The DPR quoted the Court's earlier reasoning; That passage is from the earlier decision (hlm. 278) quoted by the DPR, about that case's petitioners; this Court did not say it; DPR statement points l-m; the Court held the petition on Pasal 49(1) obscure and did not construe it; According to the DPR; DPR statement points n-o; the Court (via 40/2026) held not every programme aimed at students is education operational spending; DPR statement point p; DPR statement points q and s. Also: 1 minor correction of detail. Report errors to contact@crpg.id.