INVESTIGATING THE FEASIBILITY OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION FACTORS THROUGH A MULTIATTRIBUTE FUZZY C-MEANS BASED SPATIAL APPROACH

Abstract

Education plays a vital role in human resource development and na-tional progress. Madrasahs contribute significantly to character for-mation and religious education in Indonesia; however, many continue to face challenges related to facilities, infrastructure, teacher availabil-ity, educational quality, governance, and public perceptions. Therefore, evaluating the feasibility of Islamic education is essential to support educational equity and improve national educational outcomes. This study investigates the feasibility of Islamic education across Indone-sia’s 34 provinces using a spatial Multiattribute Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering approach. Secondary data from the Ministry of Reli-gious Affairs in 2023 were utilized, covering educator availability, Islamic educational institution units, and student enrollment. The re-sults indicate that these factors are predominantly classified in the low category, particularly at the Madrasah Aliyah level, where 91 percent of provinces fall into the low group. FCM clustering identified three education-quality categories, namely low quality ranging from 26 per-cent to 32 percent of provinces, medium quality ranging from 59 per-cent to 65 percent, and high quality accounting for only 9 percent. Spa-tial analysis further revealed considerable regional disparities in Islam-ic education quality across Indonesia. Model evaluation using the Akaike Information Criterion showed that Teacher Availability was the best-performing model with an AIC value of 444.96, followed by Insti-tution Units with 451.13 and Students with 474.48. These findings highlight substantial disparities in Islamic education quality and em-phasize the need for targeted policies, equitable resource allocation, continuous monitoring, stakeholder collaboration, and sustainable in-terventions to improve educational quality nationwide.