Hierarchical Linear Modeling of BOSP Fund Utilization and Basic Education Quality in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Equalizing basic education quality in archipelagic East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), Indonesia, remains a structural challenge because learning outcomes vary widely across regencies under the decentralized School Operational Assistance (BOSP) program. This study examines how school level BOSP spending on books (Component 02) and teacher training (Component 05) predicts school mean scores on the Academic Ability Test (Tes Kemampuan Akademik, TKA), the national Grade 6 assessment of reading literacy and numeracy, and whether regency poverty and the Education Cost Index (IBP) moderate these relationships. A two level Hierarchical Linear Model with REML estimation was applied to cross sectional data on 5,112 elementary schools nested within 22 regencies and cities. An intraclass correlation of 0.243 shows that about one quarter of the variation in school TKA scores lies between regencies. Book spending raises achievement (γ = 0.185, p < .001), whereas the main effect of training is not significant (γ = 0.082, p = .068). Training returns decline as poverty (γ = -0.015, p < .001) and education costs (γ = -0.011, p < .001) increase. Fiscal decentralization therefore backfires under severe spatial hardship, which calls for protected book allocations and regency coordinated teacher development.