Suggested Policies to Improve the Quality of Primary Education in Myanmar

Sheldon Shaeffer

CESR/UNICEF-MDEF Consultant

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?

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?

Context: Myanmar’s 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 Myanmar’s 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 child’s 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 thinkingcreativity respect for diversity and differencedemonstrating national values and behavioursvaluing 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:

1. inclusive of all children

2. academically effective

3. healthy, safe, and protective

4. participatory of children, families, and communities

5. 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 children’s 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 MOE’s 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 languageoral Myanmar and English in the early gradesMyanmar literacy after mastery of the mother tongueEnglish 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

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 SystemAnother 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 latter’s 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 children’s 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?