How to Check Whether a Daycare in Indonesia Is Actually Licensed

The Yogyakarta Case That Put This on Every Parent's List

In April 2026, police sealed a daycare in Kelurahan Sorosutan, Kemantren Umbulharjo, Kota Yogyakarta, after a former employee reported what she had seen inside. Investigators established that 103 children had been placed at the facility, and identified 53 who were indicated to have suffered physical violence or neglect.

Thirteen people were later named as suspects, made up of the foundation chair, the head of the centre and 11 caregivers. What spread fastest among parents afterwards was the administrative detail rather than the criminal one, because the city child protection office, the city child protection commission and the police all indicated the facility held no official operating permit.

That changed the question parents ask. It stopped being whether a centre feels warm on the tour, and became whether anyone outside the centre has ever signed off on it.

What Does a Licensed Daycare in Indonesia Actually Hold?

A daycare is not a category of its own in Indonesian education law. It sits inside nonformal early childhood education, and Permendikbud Nomor 25 Tahun 2018 spells out at Pasal 10 ayat (1) huruf a that the nonformal PAUD forms are kelompok bermain, tempat penitipan anak and satuan PAUD sejenis.

Each form carries its own business classification code, and those codes carry the age definitions that decide which one a centre should hold. Taman penitipan anak is KBLI 85134, described as provision from birth up to 6 years with priority from birth to age 4, while kelompok bermain is 85133, described as pre-school provision lasting 1 to 2 years, and other early childhood forms fall under 85139.

The paperwork itself comes in two pieces. There is a decree establishing the unit, the SK Pendirian, and a decree permitting it to operate, the SK Operasional, with applications running through the Online Single Submission system and the district education office and one-stop licensing office involved.

A centre that has never obtained the second decree is not simply behind on admin. It is running a service for other people's children that no authority has assessed.

The National Register Is Smaller Than the Daycare Market Looks

Read on 3 August 2026, the Kemendikdasmen reference portal recorded 243,044 PAUD units across Indonesia. Of those, only 2,656 were registered under the TPA form, which is the form most people mean when they say daycare.

The provincial picture is starker than the national one. D.K.I. Jakarta showed 57 TPA against 5,357 PAUD units in total, Banten showed 30 against 8,750, Jawa Barat 164 against 40,336, and D.I. Yogyakarta 226 against 5,062.

Those numbers do not mean the rest of the market is illegal. They mean the label you shop by and the label the state files under are frequently not the same, so advice that tells you to filter for TPA and stop there will miss legitimate centres registered as kelompok bermain or satuan PAUD sejenis. The practical consequence is simple, which is that you search by the centre's name rather than by the category you assume it belongs to.

Where Do You Look a Centre Up?

The public register is Data Referensi Pendidikan, run by Pusdatin at the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, and it lives at referensi.data.kemendikdasmen.go.id. It is worth typing carefully, because widely shared news coverage in April 2026 printed the host as referensi.data.kemdikdasmen.go.id, which does not resolve on public DNS at all.

From the PAUD section you can drill from province to district to sub-district, or search directly. The search box takes either the name of the unit or its NPSN, the national school number, which is 8 digits long.

The listing has filters that matter once you know the vocabulary. You can narrow by jalur, meaning formal or nonformal, by bentuk, covering TK, KB, TPA, SPS and RA, and by status, meaning negeri or swasta.

One route sits outside this portal entirely. Madrasah and other faith-based units are administered by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, so they are verified through Kemenag rather than here.

Inside a Unit Profile Page

Opening a unit shows two blocks worth reading closely. Identitas Satuan Pendidikan carries the name, NPSN, address, kelurahan, kecamatan, kabupaten or kota, province, status, bentuk pendidikan and jenjang pendidikan.

Dokumen dan Perijinan is the block that answers the licensing question. It lists the supervising ministry, the naungan or parent body, the NPYP, the SK Pendirian number and date, the Nomor SK Operasional and its date, an upload timestamp, and the accreditation result.

The most useful field is easy to scroll past. File SK Operasional carries a Lihat SK Operasional link, which means the operating decree itself can be opened and read, so you never have to accept a photograph of a certificate on a wall as evidence.

Accreditation appears in the same block and is a separate judgement from licensing. A permit says a unit is allowed to operate, while accreditation says an assessor has scored it.

What If the Centre Is Not on the List?

Absence is a prompt to ask more questions, not a verdict. A centre may be registered under a slightly different spelling, under a foundation name rather than a trading name, or under a bentuk you did not think to check.

There is also a category that never appears here at all. A business operating purely as a childcare service, without an education unit decree, may hold a Nomor Induk Berusaha and nothing further, which is exactly the gap the Yogyakarta case exposed.

So ask the centre directly for its NIB and its SK Operasional, and note whether the answer arrives as a document or as reassurance. If it arrives as reassurance, the district education office and the one-stop licensing office can both confirm what has actually been issued.

Be aware that no single view is complete. In Kabupaten Sleman the education office counted 563 nonformal and 514 formal PAUD units, and inspections in late April 2026 still found childcare points operating without official permits.

What Does an Operating Permit Not Tell You?

A permit is a floor, not a guarantee, and the Yogyakarta case is the clearest possible illustration of the reverse case. Kemantren Umbulharjo, where that daycare stood, had 17 registered TPA units of the 43 in Kota Yogyakarta, so a licensed alternative existed within the same sub-district.

What the register holds is documents, and documents describe a moment of assessment rather than a Tuesday afternoon. Staffing, ratios, supervision habits and how a centre behaves when a child is hurt are all outside what a decree number can tell you.

Older checklists can mislead you here too. A great deal of circulating advice still quotes Permendikbud Nomor 137 Tahun 2014 as the governing PAUD standard, and that regulation was revoked in full in 2025 by Permendikdasmen Nomor 21 Tahun 2025 at Pasal 21 huruf k.

It is worth being equally plain about what a directory can and cannot do. Happy Kamper lists providers with profiles, reviews and booking, and you can browse activities in Jakarta or read about early education and daycare, but a listing on Happy Kamper is not a permit check and we do not verify operating decrees. Where a platform does help is afterwards, once your child is enrolled and you want parent communication that leaves a written record rather than a verbal one.

What Should You Ask Before You Enrol?

Bring the register with you rather than instead of you. Look the centre up first, then use the visit to test whether what you saw online matches what you are told in the room.

Ask which bentuk the centre is registered as, and see whether the answer matches the portal. A centre that knows it is a kelompok bermain rather than a TPA is a centre that has been through the process.

Ask to see the SK Operasional and compare the number with the one on the profile page. Ask who supervises the unit, because the naungan field tells you whether a foundation stands behind it.

Then ask the questions no register answers. Who is with my child in the late afternoon, what happens when a child is hurt, and may I visit unannounced are all questions whose answers you will remember longer than a decree number.

Key Takeaways

Checking a licence in Indonesia is a short task with a specific address. Search the centre by name or NPSN at referensi.data.kemendikdasmen.go.id, open the Dokumen dan Perijinan block, and read the Nomor SK Operasional and the SK Operasional file itself rather than a certificate on a wall.

Do not treat absence from the list as proof of wrongdoing, and do not treat presence as proof of good care. Only 2,656 of 243,044 registered PAUD units carry the TPA form, so plenty of real daycares appear under kelompok bermain or satuan PAUD sejenis instead.

The Yogyakarta case in April 2026 is the reason this is worth the minute it takes. A permit would not have guaranteed good care there, but its absence was knowable in advance by anyone who looked.