Educational Transformation as a Strategic Solution to Prevent Early Marriage: A Quantitative Study among Senior High School Students

Early marriage remains a critical socio-economic and public health challenge in Sidrap Regency, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, severely limiting adolescent development and exacerbating school dropout rates. This study examines the effect of educational transformation—operationalized through digital accessibility, a life-skills-based curriculum, and guidance counseling—as a strategic institutional mechanism to mitigate early marriage among vulnerable youth populations. Utilizing a quantitative approach with a cross-sectional survey design, primary data were gathered from 385 senior high school students aged 15–19 years, who were selected via multi-stage stratified random sampling techniques. Multiple linear regression analysis was applied to evaluate empirical relationships. The results demonstrate that educational transformation significantly enhances adolescents’ early marriage preventive intentions, jointly explaining 54.2% of the variance (R2 = 0.542, p < .001). Guidance counseling emerged as the most dominant predictor (β = 0.441), followed by the life-skills curriculum (β = 0.394) and digital accessibility (β = 0.162). These findings suggest that optimizing institutional support frameworks, particularly school counseling services and integrated reproductive-health literacy, offers the most potent lever for behavior modification. Theoretically, this research bridges educational sociology and macro-social adolescent behaviors. Practically, it provides a robust, data-driven framework for the Sidrap Regency government and educational policymakers to implement targeted, curriculum-based interventions to systematically reduce regional early marriage rates while highlighting the critical need for sustainable multi-sectoral collaborations.