Muhammad Nur Rizal and his wife Novi Poespita Candra (both seated) with their daughters (from left), Nur Aliya Zahra, Soraya Syakieb, and Jaeza Amalina. The girls attended Clayton North Primary when living in Melbourne and their parents were stunned at the differences in Australian teaching methods compared with Indonesian schools. Credit:Suryo Wibowo Their children rarely had homework. There was a buddy program to make new students feel safe. One day they were invited to a presentation where their daughter, Jaeza Amalina, then in year three, explained to all the parents how the brain works. "I made the brain out of clay," Jaeza explains. "Other people made the lungs, using a balloon and straw and blowing into it." Afterwards the parents could walk around and give feedback. "I never imagined making a brain from clay," says Novi, a lecturer in psychology at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. "It improved their confidence to give a speech and gave an opportunity for parents to be involved." The couple were struck by the difference between the two countries' education systems.

Soraya Syakieb with her mother Novi Poespita Candra (in the background). The family has moved back to Indonesia and are helping local schools become more fun for students by introducing Australian teaching methods. Credit:Suryo Wibowo In Indonesia, Rizal says, children have "a mountain of homework" – so much that parents often end up doing it for them. The high-stakes national exams mean that educators teach to the test, with the standard method of instruction rote learning and memorisation. "(In Australia) they don't take tests as seriously," says the couple's oldest daughter Aliya Zahra. "Here, it's like your whole future depends on this test. I feel like I'm studying for exams all the time." Two students of Kalam Kudus Primary school in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The school is one of about 20 in the city that are trying out Australian teaching methods to make school more fun and improve outcomes. Credit:Suryo Wibowo Paradoxically, given the emphasis on homework and exams, Indonesia's performance in internationally standardised tests is dismal. The country was ranked the second bottom out of 65 countries in the 2012 PISA (Programme for International School Assessment) tests, which compare the performance of 15-year-olds in maths, science and reading.

Australia does comparatively better. In 2012 it was ranked 19th, although its deteriorating performance over time has caused much hand-wringing. As a state primary school, SD Percobaan in Yogyakarta, has to move more slowly in changing its traditional teaching methods. Credit:Suryo Wibowo But what impressed Rizal and Novi was not the test results but the different teaching style at Clayton North Primary in Melbourne. They believed projects, such as Jaeza's clay brain, were not only fun but fostered the sort of critical thinking skills their daughters would need for the jobs of the future. An acute skills shortage already exists in Indonesia. This is causing headaches for the exploding tech sector: Bilna.com, Indonesia's largest online shop for baby products, reportedly spent two years looking for a chief technology officer. Teachers that have visited Australia on exchange (from left to right) Titik Santosa (Muhammadiyah Primary School Sidoarum), Jakta Putra (Primary School Percobaan), Jumari (Primary School Percobaan headmaster) and Fauzan Satyanegara (Nahdlatul Ulama Primary school Gamping). Credit:Suryo Wibowo

By 2020, Indonesian companies will be unable to fill about one half of their entry-level positions with fully qualified candidates and 40 to 60 per cent of middle managers, according to a 2013 report by Boston Consulting Group. "Indonesia needs more entrepreneurs," says Rizal, a lecturer in information technology at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. "If the education paradigm does not change, Indonesia will be left behind." Students at SD Percobaan primary school in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Credit:Suryo Wibowo Rizal and Novi began documenting the teaching methods at Clayton North Primary and interviewing students about what made school fun. Along with other Indonesian PhD students they wrote a book. The emphasis on creating a happy and inclusive environment reminded Rizal of an educational movement in Indonesia known as Taman Siswa (Students' Garden).

Lily Halim (right) headmaster of Kalam Kudus Primary School (right) with Gerald Siregar. The primary school is one many in Yogyakarta that is using Australian teaching methods to boost students' performance. Credit:Suryo Wibowo Under Dutch rule in Indonesia, formal education was only available for the Dutch and Indonesian royalty. In 1922, Javanese nobleman Ki Hadjar Dewantoro founded Taman Siswa, a school in Yogyakarta which ordinary children could attend. Dewantoro, who had studied progressive education systems introduced by Maria Montessori in Italy and Rabindranath Tagore in India and Bengal, believed schools should be fun. It occurred to Rizal that contemporary schools in Indonesia, which stifled creativity, had moved a long way from Dewantoro's vision. He became determined to bring "Taman" back to Indonesian children. The idea for the Gerakan Sekolah Menyenangkan (Fun School Movement) was born, aimed at tailoring teaching to the individual needs of students and reducing the threat of bullying and violence in schools. In 2013, Rizal asked if Clayton North primary teachers could hold workshops for teachers from 20 schools in Yogyakarta, Central Java, who wanted to change the way they taught. Assistant principal Ken Chatterton was one of five who signed up. They all paid for their own plane tickets. "Originally we weren't entirely sure what we were getting ourselves into," Chatterton says.

About a third of the students at Clayton North Primary are Indonesian: the school is a popular choice for parents studying at nearby Monash University. Rizal and Novi's three daughters were "bright sparks", who loved every aspect of school and were willing to participate in everything. "By and large that's what we see in most of our Indonesian students," Chatterton says. In fact, Indonesian children adjusted so easily to school, the teachers were completely unaware they had come from a very different education system. "That's why it became confusing for us when we walked into a school (in Indonesia) and saw a kid being strangled and no one doing anything about it and kids sitting in rows repeating back what the teacher said and going home stressed," Chatterton says. "We had no idea." When they first visited Yogyakarta in 2014 the Clayton North teachers walked into classrooms with blank, concrete walls. That night they completely scrapped their planned presentation. "We rewrote it on how to make students feel like they belong in a space," Chatterton says. "Small things like having (children's) names in a room and having photos of the students were quite new concepts at the time."

Two years after teachers from Kalam Kudus, a private Christian school, attended the first Fun School Movement workshop, the corridors are alive with children's artwork. A smiling cartoon earth implores: Stop Global Warming! Technicolour owls are peeling off locker doors. "Children will now ask: 'Why isn't our work on display?" says principal Lily Halim. The rows of chairs are gone, replaced by a U-shape. The children have come up with their own hand gestures if they want to go to the toilet, get a drink, or ask a question. "Instead of teachers saying students have to raise their hand, children get to decide," Lily says. Kalam Kudus has also introduced a buddy system, where sixth graders take kindergarten children to the toilets, cafeteria and teachers' room and read them stories in the library.

"I have a buddy and I am teaching her how to wash her hands and eat," says grade six student Christanno. "It's quite troublesome," he admits candidly. "She eats very slowly and keeps missing her food." Like many students at Kalam Kudus, Christanno doesn't have a brother or sister. The buddy system, Lily says, is like them getting a sibling of their own. "We are trying to reduce haughtiness to prevent bullying," Lily says. "We don't want children to feel high and mighty because they are at the top of the food chain." Lily says there is a different feeling in the school since it became involved with the Fun School Movement project. "They are not big changes but there is a totally different atmosphere." The president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, gazes downs at the students in a classroom at SD Negeri Percobaan 2 in Yogyakarta. His portrait is flanked by that of his deputy, Jusuf Kalla, and the Pancasila, the philosophical foundation of Indonesia. The red and white Indonesian flag stands in the corner, as it does in classrooms across the archipelago. The children are telling us what they don't like about school. Their complaints echo those of students across the globe: too boring, too much homework, the teacher ignores me. Too much poo clogging up the toilets, one student says, too much mirth.

SD Negeri Percobaan 2 is another of the schools piloting the Fun School Movement, although it has less autonomy to do so because it is a government school. "A lot of teachers are aware of a new kind of learning, but we have to implement it within limits," says class teacher Enda. "Being a public school we have to do certain things, such as one exam a month." Great hopes for education reform were invested in Anies Baswedan when he was appointed education minister in 2014 . A former university president, who founded a program that sends graduates to teach in remote areas, Anies is well aware of the problems in the education system. "Unfortunately, our exams are full of cheating," he says. "Cheating is massive, we are so worried about this." In 2015 the education ministry asked psychometric experts to compare students' answers in multiple choice questions in the national exams. The scale of the cheating this revealed was breathtaking. In one regency in Malang, a city in East Java, 75 per cent of students were found to be collectively cheating. "This cannot be done by individual students, this is done by teachers, schools, principals distributing answers," Anies says. "Why? They want to score high." Last year, an integrity index was applied to schools for the first time, based on an analysis of their exam results.

Certificates were distributed to schools with high integrity and the 500 most honest schools were invited to the palace to see the president. This resulted in a dramatic change. "Suddenly people realise if my school doesn't have this certificate everyone will say this is not an honest school when doing exams," Anies says. Seventy-two per cent of schools performed better on the integrity index this year. But the inevitable resulting collapse in scores was sobering. Traditionally the number of students who fail the national exams has been very low because, says Anies, "everyone was cheating". This year 42 per cent failed. "It is bad, it is sad, but it is reality and we can then put in the correct interventions," the education minister says. During the election campaign of 2014, Jokowi, as the president is known, said he would do away with national exams for elementary and junior high students if elected. Anies says national exams have now been abolished for sixth graders to "reduce unnecessary pressure". The exams for ninth and 12th graders remain. But in early 2015 he announced graduation would no longer be dependent on students passing the dreaded exams. "It created a huge pressure – everyone was always thinking whether (they) would pass or not pass," Anies says. "It's so scary, it's bad for our system."

The content of the exams has also changed so that 20 per cent of marks are now derived from questions that test critical thinking. Last month, this produced a litany of complaints from students who questioned why the maths exam was suddenly so difficult. But Anies is hopeful that this will encourage teachers to move away from test preparation that relies on memorisation. "If tests reflect what we want to achieve in our education system then teaching to the test is fine as a driver." On May 30, a formal pilot of the Fun School Movement was launched at the Gadjah Mada University. Twenty schools in Yogyakarta had been selected from 50 applicants. Senior lecturers from Monash University will conduct research during the pilot, with the aim of expanding the program to other provinces in Indonesia. "What we are NOT trying to say is: 'We will come in with all the answers'," says Monash's dean of education, Professor John Loughran. "Most change in education begins with teachers recognising what they think is a problem and doing something about it. It's really a powerful thing – more strength to their arm." Meanwhile, Clayton North Primary has also learnt from its involvement in the Fun School Movement. "We feel it benefits us in understanding our students better and our families," Chatterton says.

Clayton North is now looking at ways it can help students transition back to school in Indonesia. "In Victorian education we talk a lot about understanding Asia and making students 'Asia literate' but quite often this results in a surface level understanding of a culture," Chatterton says. "We are discussing education with teachers in another country. I think it's quite special." Follow Jewel Topsfield on Facebook