Myanmar has to take more effective steps to help poor children receive basic education and ethnic minorities learn in their own languages, the newly appointed head of President Thein Sein’s Education Reform Advisory Group says.
Yin Yin Nwe, a prominent local woman leader, also called for a step-by-step approach to implement key education reforms contained in the proposed National Education Law that has nearly cleared Parliament.
In an interview with RFA’s Myanmar Service, she listed three key challenges to reforming the country’s education system, including wiping out corruption, which she said is preventing equal access to “quality education.”
“The first challenge is for poor children to complete basic education. The second one is to get quality education and it is related to corruption. The third challenge is for ethnic people to learn with their own languages for long -erm peace,” she said.
Bad state
About five decades of military junta rule until 2011 had intensified armed ethnic conflicts and left Myanmar's education system in a bad state.
“I have told the President’s Office how the education sector has been wrecked,” Yin Yin Nwe, who is also a special adviser in the government-affiliated Myanmar Peace Center (MPC), told The Irrawaddy online journal recently.
Although Yin Yin Nwe was appointed to lead the Education Reform Advisory Group last month, she has been heavily involved in the education reform effort since it was first launched by Thein Sein last October.
She serves as a member of the Education Promotion Implementation Committee [EPIC], which together with the state-appointed Comprehensive Education Sector Review [CESR] group, is providing proposals to the government to overhaul Myanmar’s education system.
The proposals helped frame the draft National Education Bill, which was passed in different forms by the two houses of parliament recently.
The two versions will have to be streamlined and approved again by both houses before it can be signed into law by President Thein Sein, according to reports.
Grade 12
Under the new legislation, Yin Yin Nwe said Myanmar would expand its largely 10-year primary and secondary school system to 12 years.
“There will be grade 12 in high schools to bring our system in line with the international standard,” she said.
“We have to work step by step to implement this plan,” she said.
Beyond that, she said, there will be many changes in higher education under the new law.
A minimum age threshold of 18 will be required to go to university, where before there were no age limitations, she said.
Department to be abolished
Under the new proposal, the Department of Higher Education which supervises universities in the country would be abolished, she said.
The universities would operate independently under their own boards, and during a five-year transition period will have a uniform curriculum, according to reports.
“The curriculum will be controlled [by the Ministry of Education] at the beginning,” said Yin Yin New.
Universities in Myanmar had long been viewed with suspicion by the previous military junta, which often closed campuses and sent students to the remote countryside in an effort to deter student unrest.
Yangon University, once one of the premier colleges of Southeast Asia, had its main campus closed following the bloody 8/8/1988, or 8888, student-led protests.
The protests involved thousands of students and were joined by Buddhist monks, civil servants, and ordinary citizens and spread across Myanmar before the military brought it under control.
Yangon University opened its main campus doors and accepted students once again last December.
Beyond the proposed National Education Law, the government has agreed to adopt certain reforms in schools, including scrapping school fees and providing free textbooks for primary and middle schools, according to the CESR group.
Reported by Kyaw Kyaw Aung. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Di Hoa Le.