Taikichiro Mori Memorial Research Grants Report

Project Name

The role of International Non-governmental Organizations in
Education Sector in Myanmar in Myanmar

Researcher

TIN WIN AUNG MOE

Affiliation

Department of Human Security and Communication

Graduate School of Media and Governance

Keio University

1. Background of the study

Background

In Myanmar, although literacy rate in urban cities increase significantly, the situations in villages have not changed dramatically over the years; especially for those villages which are off the beaten track. According to educational statistics from Ministry of National Planning, in Shan state which is located far from urban cities, there is only around 35 % of students from primary level can continue to secondary level. And children in remote areas, where many of the ethnic nationality groups reside, are particularly disadvantaged.

The children especially in remote areas face various kinds of the problems. The biggest problem facing Myanmar’s education is inadequate school buildings, classrooms, and equipments such as desk. In many villages, the residents raise money among themselves to overcome the problems of inaccessibility of school facilities. But due to a rapid growth in the number of students, there is always a lack of schools and equipments. In some school, children are studying on the floor because they have no desk or chair, and 2 to 3 classrooms are crammed into one room. Therefore, children are facing the problem to concentrate on their studies. Another problem is shortage of teachers. Many schools are without the adequate number of teachers. Some teachers who came from other, mainly urban area find it difficult to adjust to the rural life style. The lack of enough funds for education leads to a lack of teachers, which results in a deterioration of education in rural areas. Inability of parents to meet school expenses and working obligations and caring of siblings are also some barriers of the rural children to gain access to education. In rural society, child labor is common. Especially during the busy farming season, families tend to make their children help, meaning they will be absent from school.

Due to lacking of capacity especially in finance, the Government could not be able to manage to solve all kind of problems and emphasize on many villages. However, considering the importance of increasing the education level and literacy skill which can contributes to higher living standards and also without providing basic literacy the people cannot effectively grasp and utilize knowledge and skills, the Government has accepted the intervention of NGOs to somehow overcome the barriers. In Myanmar, NGOs have carried out programs with momentum since the mid-1990s. In fact, the role of NGOs plays an important role because vast majority of Myanmar's population still live in rural areas. NGOs usually emphasize on the places where the government is not adequately reaching and the areas where the government has not paid adequate attention. The NGOs work mainly in the field of education has provided for building, training, scholarship, libraries, and conducted literacy and post literacy classes. But, it still needs more resources directed to Education, in order to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults.

2. Objective

The main objectives of this research are to analyze the role NGOs in development of education sector with the basis of NGOs’ role is significantly and truly necessary to educational development in Myanmar, by examining the effectiveness of their objectives and projects to rural children. And I also expect to point out the fact that more support from NGOs is still required for the Education sector in Myanmar in order to promote quality education. I will later explore success and failure of the activities of NGOs and access the NGOs-government coordination.

3. Significance of study

This research proposal will be primary hoped for receiving significant issues from various views (personnel from NGOs and local people) with trying to imagine the way NGOs implementing the projects to meet local children.

4. Research Questions

This field work had been conducted to find the answer of the following questions -

1. Why are the difficulties the rural people facing to get education access?
2. What are the results if the rural people get access to education and if they do not get it?
3. How the INGOs are giving assistance to achieve the sustainable education access in rural villages?

5. Fieldwork Planning

With the intention to find out some of my puzzles of problems of study, I planned to conduct the one month filed work trip in Myanmar. I chose the Shan State as my location of field work. One reason for choosing the Shan State was that after I got some information about INGOs working in basic education sector, I decided to do some survey to Saetanar which has been working actively in that field in the rural Shan villages. Therefore comparing to other States and Regions, I can get more information about the results of the help of INGOs in access to basic education. Another reason is that the rural villages in Shan state can resemble the other rural villages around the whole country. Within the Shan State, I arranged to conduct my fieldwork in Taunggyi district and Lashio district and observe the nearby villages. Then I fixed the date from 23 August, 2010 to 21 September, 2010 as my field work duration. To conduct the fieldwork, I applied for the Mori-grant and received some amount for the field research.

6. Methodology

This research mainly employs qualitative method of investigation. Face-to-face interviews were also done among INGOs staffs, rural households in Shan State and some officials from Minister concerned. I arranged to meet with some personnel from those INGOs and local communities, who are receiving the help from INGOs and who are not, with the purpose of doing in-dept interview and discussion with them. A sample of 25 households was selected from randomly selected villages around Taunggyi and Lashio.

7. Field Work

Time	23-8-2010 to 21-9-2010
Site	Villages around Taunggyi and Lashio, Shan State
Method	In-dept Interview and Discussion
Respondents	3 INGO staffs, 8 teachers, 25 households

Respondents’ Profile

Type of Informants	Number	Gender		Age group	Avg. size of household
		M	F
INGO Staff	3	2	1	25~45	-
Teachers	8	2	6	35~55	-
Parents	16	7	9	45~55	5
Children	38	20	18	9~15	-
TOTAL	65	31	34

The research site for this study was Taunggyi district and Lashio district in Shan State. One reason for choosing the Shan State was that it is one of States where one of the active INGO, namely Saetanar, is working in basic education sector. Another reason is that the rural villages in Shan state can resemble the other rural villages around the whole country.

http://www.asterism.info/states/11/map.html

http://mappery.com/map-of/Myanmar-Map

The Shan State is situated in the north-eastern part of Myanmar, bordering the People's Republic of China on the North and East, the Lao People's Democratic Republic on the East, the Kingdom of Thailand on South and East. It is positioned at Latitude North 19 degrees 20 minutes and South 24 degrees 9 minutes and between Longitude East 96 degrees 13 minutes and West 101 degrees 9 minutes. Shan State is the largest of the 14 administrative divisions by land area. It has the land area of 155,800 km². The state gets its name from the Shan people, one of several ethnic groups that inhabit the area. Shan State is largely rural, with only three cities of significant size: Lashio, Kengtung, and the capital, Taunggyi.

Taunggyi has an estimated population of 205,000 as of 2010, making it the tenth largest city in Myanmar and is at an elevation of 1,400 m above sea level. There is no significant industry in Taunggyi. It used to be the trans-shipment point for many of the agricultural products of southern Shan State. Rice, beans or peas and maize were the most common crops. Lashio is the largest town in northern Shan State, Myanmar, about 200 kilometres northeast of Mandalay. The current population is around 130,000.

Lashio is a large trading town with a vibrant economy, and with numerous villages of Palaung, Akha, Pa O and Shan in the vicinity. Rice cultivation accounted for nearly half of all land under cultivation. Forty seven percent (47%) of all agricultural land cultivated was used for rice. The next most common crop cultivated was maize, which accounted for 28% of all land under cultivation. Nine percent (9%) of the land for cultivation of various other crops. vegetables (7%), pulses (7%) and oilseeds (1%) accounted for the remaining cultivated land.

8. Findings and Analysis

8.1 Finding 1: Implication of Household’s income

Through my discussions with the respondents, I found out that the issue of not going school and not continuing to school is mainly concerned with their socio-economic situations in rural Myanmar area. Most of them have pointed out that the not enough income is the major constraint for them. They need to work every day to be able to provide their family food. The 10 year old boy said “he never went to school since his parents have divorced and he lives with his mother. As his mother is a part time housemaid and can not take care of his younger brother and sister, he has to stay at home to look after them. However he really wants to go to school.” When I asked his mother, she said “although she wants his son to be an educated one, she has no choice and she does not know what will happen to the other children.” And the girl who already passed the 1^st grade said “she has to quit school when her mother died. She has to do house work and take care of younger brother. And sometime she has to do some farming. She said going to school is her biggest dream.” And 15 year old boy said “he lives with his mother. He is the eldest one in his family. Although his mother wants him to continue school, he needed to quit to school for subsistence. He and his mother sell corns in market. His younger brother and sister are now going to school. Therefore, he really wants to school.”

The result of the discussions indicated that villagers do not the choice to decide whether going to school or not. As they all are poor rural villagers, the main indicator that decides the children’s access to education is their economic situations. To understand their economic situations, I collected the information concerning with their income levels, and their occupation, and I tried to find out how it affects the chances of the children to gain access the education. And what I found out is that in the rural villages of Shan States, most people (52 %) are earning less than 20 US dollar per month which amount could only cover for their daily subsistence for food.

Income Level	Households
	Amount	%
Up to 20 USD	13	52
21 to 40 USD	5	24
41 to 60 USD	4	16
61 to 80 USD	2	8
More than 80 USD	1	4
Total	25	100

Table 1: Income Level of the Households

Base on the income level, I analyzed the effect on the children’s situation in education access.

Number of children whose parent in different income level		Never been enrolled in School		Drop out		Completion of Primary School		Transferring to Secondary School ( from amount of completion of Primary School)
		Amount	%	Amount	%	Amount	%	Amount	%
Up to 20 USD	20	2	10	13	65	5	25	-	0
21 to 40 USD	10	0	0	6	60	4	40	2	20
41 to 60 USD	4	0	0	1	25	3	75	1	25
61 to 80 USD	2	0	0	1	50	1	50	1	50
More than 80 USD	2	0	0	0	0	2	100	2	100
TOTAL	38	2	5	21	55	15	40	6	16

Table 2: Consequences of income level upon school drop out

After the effect of income upon education access was analyzed, I need to know the sources of income which could contribute in the considerations to improve the rate of children go to school. In this case, what I found out is that, like other rural areas in Myanmar, the most common source for households is income derived from wages based on agriculture. According to my sampling, of other income sources, the wages labor, who earned mostly through agriculture based job opportunities, and agriculture sector are the primary source of income. 72 percent of the households have to base on the wages from agriculture as a first source of income. The average number of income earners per household was 2, parents. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, the average size of a household is 5, and this could easily give the great burden for their livelihood upon households. And this problem make the parents to ask their children help them in ways such as working in the farm or caring for the siblings while they are going to work. Reliance on agriculture as a source of income indicates that agriculture is unable to support both households’ food needs and other expenditures such as education.

The four most common sources of income are depicted in the below table:

No.	Income Activities	Amount	%
1	Wages / Casual Labor	10	40
2	Agriculture	8	32
3	Bamboo / Wood cutting	5	20
4	Sale of livestock	2	8
		25	100

Table 3: Income Activities of the Households

The above findings are the call for the INGOs working in the education sector. In fact, their normal ways of supporting such as donating textbooks and building schools could not effectively improve the chances to get the education accesses of the children. If INGOs, now, want to show the significance of them, they need to create the better alternative ways that not just only depend on the donation.

8.2 Finding 2: Implication of local value upon education’s contribution for their better-off lives

As mentioned earlier, 70 percent of Myanmar population lives in rural areas. And approximately 64.1 percent are employed in the agricultural sector. Also sampling data shows 72 percent are depending on the agricultural as the main income source. In regards to their livelihood of spending most of the time in rural farms, I needed to take into consideration about the households’ opinions and views upon sending their children to school. Because, in some situations, I found out that even though sending their children does not give them a big deal of burden, some children have to quit from the school unnecessarily which could hinder the progress of EFA implementations.

Households interpretation upon Education	No. of Households	%
Think there are no returns from Education	8	32
Education could promote their live but do not know how	5	20
Just want their children to be able to read and write	10	40
Just for prestige	2	8
	25	100

Table 4: Households views upon education

Most of the households thought that schooling their children has no returns. They do not think anything will change in a big deal if their children become educated. They said that even after completing school, most of them go back to the farm. Therefore what is the point for going school and being educated person? They think they can live without education. In fact, they do not understand the vitality of education in their life. In fact, there are many aspects that make them not interesting in education. They satisfy their simple life of earning small money as hard-labors in farming, and they could easily migrant to other nearby countries if they could not find a job in their towns or villages. This is the one of the major factors of the massive drop-out rate before completion of the primary cycle of education.

In order to overcome this implications, INGOs as well as government has to find out the better solution. The government has to create the better job opportunities or create the better education curriculums that would suite to the local poor. As they mainly have to depend on the agriculture, if there would be the basic education schools mainly base the lessons on the agriculture, they would more be interested in education.

8.3 Finding 3: INGOs’ contributions

Most of the INGOs working in the education field are mainly focus to provide the physical support to schools. For instance, their education support activities include the construction and maintenance of school buildings. Moreover, these groups often donate money, benches and school books to government and sometime pay for village teachers’ salaries. In fact, these kinds of supports could only ease the plight of the rural poor in short term. Therefore, in order to fulfill the EFA goals, although they have the capacities, INGOs have not shown great contributions. They have to do alternative ways if they really want to contribute in improving the Myanmar education. With respects to the problems mentioned above which reflect the situations in rural villages in Myanmar, they need to start reconsider their strategies in helping the rural poor.

However, during my fieldwork, I found out that one of the INGOs seems to have a great potential in giving support the rural poor in Shan State. And I think the way this INGO, by the name of Saetanar, implementing its support strategies is the best possible way that not only giving the rural people the sustainable access to education but also giving them the chance to mitigate their hardness in their livelihood.

Saetanar foundation is being funded by The Nippon Foundation in order to improve the educational environment for children. According to Memorandum of Understanding between Myanmar Government and Japan Government, it has been implementing “Education for Peace and Development Project” (EPD) in Shan State since June, 2002. It implemented the 5-year project from June 2002 till May 2007 as Phase I. During that Phase I, it constructed a total of 102 school buildings in Southern and Northern Shan States. Now they are in Phase II of project and planning to construct another 100 school buildings in the same areas by the end of May 2012.

The important thing is that its projects embrace various activities to directly and indirectly facilitate the sustainable operation of these schools. It has two phases in project Implementation. The first step is construction of school building. The schools built by the Foundation are basically wooden buildings or of reinforce concrete framework, with block walls and iron roofs in accordance with the specification of Department of Basic Education in Myanmar. If necessary, it also provides flush latrine, rainwater tank, blackboard, desks and chairs. And the second phase is community development project.

When implementing the project, Saetanar solicits the maximum participation from the local communities in order to make sure that their sense of ownership grows as the project proceeds and, as a result, that their school will be run in a sustainable manner, thus ensuring a long-term access to quality educational facilities for the children. Therefore, villagers are requested to make, wherever and whenever possible, utmost collective effort by contributing their own resources to the school construction. When such villager’s contributions in service (i.e labor), kind (i.e construction materials), etc., have deducted the overall construction cost for a particular school and save Saetanar’s project budget for that school, those contributions are then calculated into the monetary value and its amount is allotted, from the budget balance, to the implementation of village development activities. Some examples of projects are rice mill, livestock breeding, micro credit and community farming.

One of villager whose village received said “after building the school with support from Saetanar Foundation, the Foundation gave back some amount of money to initiate income generating business. We all the villagers decided to buy a truck car with around 45 thousand dollars. We use the money got from hiring this truck in maintaining school, supporting students and sometime hiring teachers.” And also, a teacher said “Before the project the school building was build by wood. It was so noisy. But now they rebuilt the school building using cement block and it become sound proof. Students also become to interest in learning. The biggest achievement is that the school has been upgraded to secondary school and, as a result, school drop out rate is also reduced”. I found out that this kind of help shows much more promises and effective for the future benefit instead of conventional aids.

According to the personnel from Saetanar, they have found out that the major problem is the local people do not show engrossing sign to participate in their projects. Another problem is that they have some constraints in extending their projects. Although their target plan includes the whole Shan State, they can now access to extend their projects in only 8 townships because of security.

8.4 Finding 4: Implication of the Government and INGOs cooperation

Comparing to the other developing countries, apart from United Nations agencies, Myanmar receives a few amount of aids. Currently only 50 INGOs have been taking actions in the aspect of development. Moreover, of 50 INGOs, there are just 4 INGOs are working in the basic education sector. That, in fact, is inadequate number for the all around development of Myanmar. It indicates that the government needs to make some reforms in the policy towards INGOs. In doing so, I tried to find out the issues in the relation between the government and INGOs.

In fact, Myanmar has, since independence, prided itself on its values of self-help and self-reliance. For many decades, it has been going its own way. That kind of sense gives the government unease in handle the aids from other countries. However, for the country to evolve and take its place in the world as a modern developed nation, self-reliance alone is not enough. Greater efforts on Myanmar’s part, together with empathy, cooperation and assistance from the world community, are most necessary. Myanmar has some means, but they are limited. It needs understanding and support from the international community. However, the complex government policies have affected the way international agencies operate. There is an evident mistrust of international actors in Myanmar, which manifests itself in suspicion and stringent controls on aid projects. Yet this kind of mistrust relation is a result of sanctions and divergent policies toward aid in Myanmar from some actors such as Australians, the European countries, and the U.S. They have been using the aids as an element in playing political games against Myanmar government.

The mistrust relation leads to the difficulties in endeavoring to promote the rural poor people. Government control and limitations on development projects result in agencies feeling unable to share information or openly debate government policies and performance which mean limited open and frank dialogue with government. As a result of having no open cooperation, the constraint such as low volumes of aid, a limited pool of human resources, and limited capacity of both within government and International agencies all impact on the effectiveness of aid. Another factor is lack of reliable data. Information and statistical data is highly sensitive. The government is reluctant to openly share national data and can be resistant to acknowledging the limitations and reliability of existing official data.

Now, Myanmar has been going into democratization process. And the new government will be formed. Therefore, the new government has to be aware of such restrictions in the development process while Myanmar has been striving for all around development: education, health and social services sector. There is still much to be done in social services and this task has been carried out by the joint efforts of the Government, the community members, NGOs, INGOs and other United Nations Organizations. If these joint efforts are activated by building the trust with INGOs and reduce the barriers, social welfare services will definitely reach its peak in the near future.

9. Conclusion

In my point of view, like any other developing countries, the people in the rural villages of Myanmar have many difficulties in their livelihood. That kind of livelihood is affecting to the children in the rural areas in gaining the access to education. The government and ministry of education are endeavoring as much as they can to reduce the school drop out rate at any level. However, they can not focus on all the villages especially in remote area. And also some problems such as socio-economic problems are out of hand of ministry of education to solve. In that case, the supporting from INGOs is really helping to those in rural villages in many sectors. However, in education sectors, there are only a few INGOs working in the whole country. In Shan state, there is only one INGO, Saetanar Foundation, continuously implementing the projects concerning with education. Therefore, we need much more INGOs in helping to promote the education level of the rural people. To get INGOs into Myanmar, the government need to revive its attitude towards as current cooperation with them seem to hinder the effectiveness of the INGOs. The future directions of the study, I will find out the better ways to improve the basic education completion rate and retention rate in rural villages of Myanmar. And then, I will try to recommend the government side to change its views upon the INGOs and encourage their activities by cooperating under the better set-up confident building scheme.