The Role of Gayo Customary Law in Supporting the Effectiveness of Aceh Qanun No. 9 of 2015 on the Implementation of Education

Abstract

Aceh Qanun No. 9 of 2015, which amends Qanun No. 11 of 2014 on the Implementation of Education, obliges students to dress Islamically, stay free of narcotics, and avoid pornography, and prohibits educators, education personnel, and students from brawling, smoking, dressing improperly, communicating improperly, and misusing gadgets during instruction. It assigns no institution to these norms beyond the school and provides no sanction, leaving a gap between a provincial norm and the community in which conduct actually occurs. This article asks what the qanun regulates and where it is institutionally silent, what Gayo customary law offers at those points, and what legal basis exists for connecting them. It uses a normative juridical design combining statutory, conceptual, and analytical approaches, reading the qanun and related regional legislation against peer-reviewed scholarship on Gayo adat and on legal pluralism in Aceh. The analysis yields three findings. The qanun's conduct provisions are stated as prohibitions without addressees, procedures, or consequences beyond the classroom. Gayo customary law supplies at those precise points a behavioural vocabulary, the four categories of sumang governing speech, gaze, movement, and sitting, together with an institution, the Sarak Opat, that already exercises recognised jurisdiction over such conduct. Existing legislation on customary institutions and the qanun's own clauses on local excellence education and local content books provide the legal channel for the connection. The article argues that adat contributes to the qanun's effectiveness not as supplementary content but as normative translation and jurisdictional complement.