Suggested Policies to Improve the Quality of Primary Education in Myanmar

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Suggested Policies to Improve the Quality of
Primary Education in Myanmar

• Sheldon Shaeffer
• CESR/UNICEF-MDEF Consultant

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Rethinking the Challenges

• Why do Grade 1 classes often have the least
  experienced and/or trained teachers and the
  highest pupil-teacher ratios? (And why is Grade
  5 the opposite?)
• 5-10 of children in Myanmar have a disability
  perhaps 400,00 between the ages of 5-14. How
  many are in school? How many could be in school?
• Why do many children never enroll or fail in
  school?

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Why Children Fail/Drop out
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Rethinking the Challenges

• Why is blame for school failure placed more often
  on children and their families rather than on the
  education system and school?
• Why do we use the word drop-out when most
  drop-outs are usually push-outs from the
  school?
• Why do many Ministry of Education staff,
  especially head teachers, feel more accountable
  UP the system rather than OUT to the community?
• Why do most MOEs celebrate achievements in
  national NERs rather than worry about
  sub-national disparities and net NON-enrolment
  and NON-completion rates?

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Context Myanmars Commitment to Fulfilling the
Right to Education

• Myanmar has committed itself to fulfill the right
  to education through a range of national and
  international instruments
• The Myanmar Constitution
• The Convention on the Rights of the Child
• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
  of Discrimination Against Women
• The Convention on the Rights of Persons with
  Disabilities
• Education for All
• The Millennium Development Goals

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Key Messages

• An education system of good quality must be
• rights-based and equity-focused, with equality
  and non-discrimination as central principles
• based on a comprehensive, systematic framework
  vision, objectives, policies, strategies,
  standards, and action plans
• child-centred, focused on the best interests of
  the child
• child-seeking, actively looking for children not
  in school and getting them into school and
  succeeding

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Key Outcomes for Myanmars Children

• Universal access to basic education, starting
  with ECCD centres at age 3-4 and kindergarten at
  age 5
• Successful early learning to lay the foundations
  for later learning and life
• Completion of primary school and equitable
  opportunities to continue to higher levels of
  education

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Key Goals for the Education System (1)

• A coherent, seamless transition from ECCD centres
  through the early grades of primary school
• Readiness All children ready for school and
  all schools ready for children
• Inclusion the elimination of all barriers to
  school and to learning
• Healthy, safe, and protective learning
  environments
• Early mastery of numeracy and of literacy in
  Myanmar and English based on a language policy
  which promotes initial instruction and literacy
  in the childs mother tongue
• Enhanced teacher capacity in the competencies
  needed to promote inclusive, child-friendly, and
  child-centred classrooms and schools

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Key Goals for the Education System (2)

• Enhanced management capacity of head teachers and
  inspectors/supervisors to both improve school
  management and enhance classroom practice
• All schools meeting (and eventually exceeding)
  minimum service standards
• Desired outcomes for all children in Myanmar
• critical thinking
• creativity
• respect for diversity and difference
• demonstrating national values and behaviours
• valuing their own culture and language,
  traditions and heritage

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Key Components of Quality Schools

• An education system and schools of good quality
  must be
• inclusive of all children
• academically effective
• healthy, safe, and protective
• participatory of children, families, and
  communities
• with visionary, effective leadership

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I. Inclusive (1) Getting Children Ready for
School
Provide parenting education on the principles and practice of good early childhood development
Provide all children aged 3-4 access to ECCD centres
Target these centres on the most disadvantaged and excluded groups and individual children - of the population
Provide all children aged 5 access to kindergartens
Ensure that these ECCD centres and kindergartens are of good quality have adequately trained and remunerated teachers utilise inclusive, child-centred approaches and use the childrens mother tongue(s) Ensure inter-sectoral collaboration with Ministries of Health and Social Welfare (and other relevant agencies) with a strong coordination mechanism -- to ensure adequate health, hygiene, nutrition, and protection for young children


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Inclusive (2) Including Those Most Excluded
Strengthen the MOEs EMIS/TEMIS to focus on issues of exclusion data on out-of-school children and disaggregated by sex, location, economic quintile, surveys of children with disabilities
Make the education system and individual schools not only child-centred but also child-seeking
Expand and institutionalize non-formal education for those still excluded from formal education Develop policies to target groups most excluded from education


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Inclusive Learners in Remote Areas

• Devise affordable and feasible measures to
  attract good quality teachers to remote and rural
  areas
• In small schools in rural and remote areas, set a
  student-teacher ratio based not on one teacher
  per class but rather one teacher per X number of
  students (e.g., 25 students)
• IT IS INEFFICIENT TO PUT ONE TEACHER IN EVERY
  GRADE IN SMALL SCHOOLS.
• Actively promote the use of multi-grade teaching
  in such small schools
• MULTIGRADE TEACHING IS THE PEDAGOGY OF FIRST
  CHOICE IN MANY MODERN EDUCATION SYSTEMS AROUND
  THE WORLD.

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Inclusive Learners with Disabilities

• Actively find and enroll children with
  disabilities
• Ensure that any new schools and any renovations
  of existing schools fulfill the international
  standards of accessibility in terms of disability
• Provide pre-service and in-service teacher
  training in the identification of developmental
  delays and disabilities and in their possible
  mitigation in the classroom
• Provide specialised resource teachers to support
  teachers in regular schools toward the genuine
  inclusion of learners in their classrooms
• Provide assistive devices to children who can
  benefit from them (hearing aids and eyeglasses)
• Promote activities to develop positive attitudes
  towards persons with disabilities

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Inclusive Learners from Ethnic Minorities

• Promote the use of mother tongue as the language
  of instruction and for initial literacy (e.g.,
  from ECCD centres through Grade 3 or longer)
  beginning in areas where most people speak one
  language
• For these selected languages, prepare necessary
  learning materials
• Recruit and train more teachers from ethnic
  minorities ensuring that they know both how to
  teach using mother tongue and how to manage the
  transition to the national language
• oral Myanmar and English in the early grades
• Myanmar literacy after mastery of the mother
  tongue
• English literacy after mastery of Myanmar (i.e.,
  Grade 6)

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Inclusive Learners in Extreme Poverty

• Eliminate any extra incidental school expenses
  for impoverished families not covered under free
  education
• Explore the possibility of providing conditional
  cash transfers to these families to encourage
  them to enroll their children in school
• Research the extent and seriousness of the
  private tuition fee problem and implement
  policies to reduce its impact on teaching
  processes and on poor families

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Inclusive Learners in Emergencies

• Ensure that the Ministry of Education has in
  place a comprehensive Disaster Risk Reduction
  Plan which can help the system and individual
  schools anticipate, mitigate the effects of,
  respond to, and recover from natural and manmade
  disasters and emergencies
• As new schools are built and old ones renovated,
  ensure that they meet the international standards
  for disaster-resistant safe schools
• Ensure that children are able to continue
  education during emergencies in a healthy, safe,
  protective environment

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Inclusive Learners in (Post) Conflict Areas

• Given that the consequences of violence against
  children are both immediate and long-lasting and
  that children exposed to violence and risk
  (including the risk of unexploded ordnance) can
  experience physical and psychological problems
  later in life and sometimes harm themselves
  and/or others
• Promote inclusive, conflict-sensitive education
  as key to peace-building, contributing to the
  development of positive attitudes towards all
  groups and celebrating difference, which is
  fundamental to building cohesive, peaceful,
  prosperous societies
• Promote mine-risk education in affected areas

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Inclusive Learners Affected by HIV/AIDS

• Develop and disseminate widely a clear, strong
  Ministry of Education HIV/AIDS policy which
  prohibits discrimination in the enrolment and
  handling of HIV/AIDS-affected children in school
• Ensure that pre-service and in-service teacher
  education programmes provide essential
  information on both HIV and AIDS prevention and
  transmission (including on how the virus is NOT
  transmitted) and on the handling of students
  affected by HIV and AIDS
• Promote programmes, materials, and practices
  among teachers, communities and children that
  promote positive attitudes and combat stigma
  against PLWHA to support effective implementation
  of polices

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Other Excluded Learners

• Children from migrant families in Thailand who
  are likely to return to Myanmar need systematic
  approaches to recognition of prior learning and
  reintegration into the education system
• Child soldiers who have been released from the
  Tatmadaw need systematic channels of support to
  reintegrate into the education system
  (formal/non-formal vocational training)
• Other groups girls (early marriage pregnancy
  sibling care) street children and working
  children..
• AND MANY CHILDREN SUFFER FROM MULTIPLE FACTORS OF
  EXCLUSION A RURAL, ETHNIC MINORITY GIRL WITH A
  DISABILITY HAS VERY LITTLE CHANCE OF EVER GETTING
  TO SCHOOL

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Assessing Disparities of Outcomes (youth literacy
rates - urban/rural, ethnicity, gender)

• 3 of every 4 women who die are indigenous. Ethnic
  disparities are wider than in other countries
  with large indigenous populations.
• Women in Alta Vrapaz are 4 times as likely to die
  than women from Sacatepequez, near the capital

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Learners in the Monastic System

• Another 300,000 study in monastic schools
• Promote greater collaboration among MOE, MORA,
  and the monastic system to strengthen the MOE and
  monastic systems (without sacrificing the
  latters flexibility, inclusiveness, and
  community support)
• Collect more accurate data on the size and scope
  of the monastic system, on its costs and budgets,
  and on faith-based systems
• Improve monastic school system management
  goals, quality indicators, administrative
  guidelines, etc.
• Disseminate good practices of the monastic system
• Provide support to monastic education reforms
  i.e., the work of the Monastic Education
  Development Group and of the Center for Promotion
  of Monastic Education

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Learners in Ethnic Education Systems

• Perhaps 400,000 or more children study in ethnic
  education systems both in Myanmar and in
  Thailand. Exploring the nature and future of
  these systems is essential in the further
  development of education.
• Depending on the circumstances, establish
  stronger linkages between the formal education
  system and each ethnic system in order to
  strengthen the latter (without sacrificing their
  relative independence, flexibility, and community
  support) in order to promote a common vision for
  and develop steps towards a stronger, more
  unified Myanmar

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II. Effective (1) Successful Early Learning
Collect accurate data at township and school level on teacher characteristics and student-teacher ratios, by grade
Implement policies to ensure that the early grades have the lowest student-teacher ratios and the teachers most qualified to promote early learning
Develop a coherent, seamless educational framework for children aged 3-8 with a developmentally appropriate curricula, specialised teacher education, and a child-centred approach and learning environments using the childrens mother tongue(s)
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Effective Successful Early Learning
Develop early student assessment systems to identify, respond to, and remediate developmental and learning delays Institutionalise regular Monitoring Learning Achievement processes Improve the primary school curriculum by decongesting its content, clarifying its desired learning outcomes, and inserting relevant, local content
Promote a serious, comprehensive reform of the entire teacher management and development process, from recruitment to retirement, based on a standard teacher competency framework the reform of pre-service teacher education, a strengthened quality assurance system, and a reinforced school cluster process
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Effective (2) Completion and Continuation
Develop flexible and child-friendly student assessment mechanisms and tools which promote critical thinking and creativity rather than rote memorisation
Carry out research to better understand the process of and reasons for student dropout/pushout and what can be done to mitigate it
Train teachers and encourage schools to identify early on children at risk of failure and find ways to keep them in school
Develop specific measures in primary school to encourage students to continue to Grade 6 and beyond
Ensure that secondary schools are equally child-friendly
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III. Healthy, Safe, and Protective
Provide schools with adequate health and sanitation facilities including clean water, latrines, and hand washing practices
Ensure that the school has a safe and protective environment with explicit policies against abuse and harm including corporal punishment
Provide life-skills based education, knowledge, and skills including those related to disaster risk reduction, peace building, and conflict sensitisation
Ensure schools have a comprehensive Disaster Risk Reduction Plan and meet international standards for disaster-resistant safe schools
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IV. With Participatory School Governance
Develop mechanisms to promote the active participation of students in school life and management
Encourage parental and community involvement in the life of the school as members of school-community committees and as active participants in the development of school self-assessments (SSA) and school-improvement plans (SIP)
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V. With Visionary, Effective Leadership
Recruit head teachers and ATEOs on merit Use a standard competency framework to provide initial and continuing training to head teachers and ATEOs in the knowledge and skills essential to improve school management and classroom practice in areas such as
instructional leadership the importance of early learning the effective management of the school environment school-based management the effective and participatory implementation of school self-assessments and school improvement plans focused on the efficient use of school resources and on the improvement of student outcomes

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With Visionary, Effective Leadership
Ensure that indicators such as enrolment and attendance rates, student-teacher ratios (by grade), dropout and completion rates, and transition rates are regularly and accurately collected and used as the basis for improvement planning (e.g., via TEMIS) at both school and township levels
Develop minimum service standards which all schools must eventually meet in regard to issues such as student-teacher ratios, teacher qualifications, the school environment, and learner outcomes
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Issues for Discussion
Will such suggestions as these be useful in the formulation of a future Basic Education Law (which would include post-primary)? Are there any gaps? To what extent do they build on and support ongoing activities of the Ministry, of development partners, and of other organisations concerned with the development of education in Myanmar? Specific examples? What changes institutional, systems, financial, capacity development, coordination, etc. would need to take place in the Ministry of Education to implement suggestions such as these? Any other suggestions/comments?