Myanmar to invest new funds to educate disabled children and the children of migrant workers

Out of more than 300,000 Myanmar children living with disabilities, half have never gone to school. There are no proper facilities and families cannot afford private schools. In Thailand, Myanmar migrants cannot send their children to Thai state schools, and have to rely on schools organised by civil society groups.

Yangon (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Myanmar’s new government intends to invest heavily in education, especially in the informal education (outside the state system). This entails more money for students with disabilities, who have been hitherto excluded, and the poor, whose parents cannot pay school fees.

“The Education Ministry has recently engaged in informal education because of the new government’s policy. For the time being, we are holding talks with stakeholders,” said Khine Mye, a ministry spokesperson.

The ministry spent over one billion kyat (about US$ 850,000) in the 2015-16 fiscal year, and plans to establish alternative and life-long education departments under its supervision, the ministry spokesperson added.

Under the NLD government, a 5 per cent tax has been levied on all mobile calling and data charges beginning in April. This raised almost US$ 6 million invested in the education sector in April and May.

By and large though, in Myanmar, disabled children and youth are often disadvantaged in education. A 2012 UNICEF report found that around 318,000 Myanmar children younger than 15 years were disabled, and that about 250,000 of them are of school-age (6–15 years).

Almost half the people with a disability have never attended school compared with the national average enrolment rate of 84 per cent. At the same time, only 2.2 per cent of people with disability have university qualifications, as compared to 12 per cent for the non-disabled population.

Even for who do go to school, things are not easy. Administrators and teachers are often untrained to cope with pupils with disabilities. And facilities are mostly inadequate.

In 2010 around 800 disabled children were enrolled in formal schools, a further 1,450 in special schools which cater mainly to blind and deaf children, and 36 in higher education.

Myanmar has not signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which requires signatories to guarantee everybody access to free and quality education.

Children with disabilities are not only concern of the new government. The latter has started educational programmes for children of migrant workers in Thailand, who are not Thai citizens and are therefore unable to attend Thai state schools.

“There are migrant learning centres [in Mae Sot] funded by civil society organisations. There were previously 74 centres there but now there are 64,” said Tin Nyunt, an education expert.

Last year, 100 children of Myanmar migrant workers sat for the matriculation exams in Myawaddy, in Myanmar, across the Thai border from Mae Sot, and 17 of them passed.

• myanmar
• education
• disabled
• students
• migrant workers