Thailand-Myanmar non-formal education linked  LAMPHAI INTATHEP MAE SOT: A 12-year-old girl whose name was known only ‘Cherry’ drawn up her life plan to continue higher education in her country of origin, Myanmar, when she graduates from the Parami learning centre for Myanmar migrant children in Tak’s Mae Sot district. “I was born and live in Thailand as my parents have worked here. I love studying Myanmar language and want to further higher education in this field in Myanmar. I would like to be a singer there,” she said in Thai fluently. Cherry is among 81 migrant students aged from 9 to 15 who have studied at the Parami and A-yeon-au (อายอนอู) learning centres in Mae sot in-which Myanmar’s non-formal curriculum was implemented. Yuwadee Silapakit, project coordinator of the Help Without Frontiers Foundation (HWF), said that Myanmar children who completed studying from the learning centres for migrant children situated on Thai soil were unable to further higher education in Myanmar as they hold no official certificate which was trusted or accepted by Myanmar's educational institutions. "They have to study in Thailand as their parents have worked here. Many of them might go back to their country one day, so the existing educational system should accommodate them to continue higher education in Myanmar," she said. That led to the first step towards cooperation with the non-formal education sector of Myawaddy in Myanmar's Kayin State. Myanmar's non-formal education curriculum was firstly introduced into Thailand's Parami and A-yeon-au learning centres in this 2014 academic year to teach 80 Myanmar students. There had Level 1 and 2 which required two years to complete, all lessons were taught in Myanmar language, and teachers were trained by Myawaddy schools where students' name were registered at. After completed, they will receive the certificate issued by Myawaddy schools. "Then, they can continue their higher education at Grade 6 in Myanmar. In future, we would like to see the educational system to be as flexible as possible and importantly fit different contexts of children as education is a fundamental right of every child," said Ms Yuwadee. Daw Aye Myint Kyi, Myawaddy Township monitor, echoed that Myanmar children who graduated from Thailand were unable to continue higher education in Myanmar due to nonequivalence of academic certificate. "More cooperations linking the education system of both countries are necessary in order to allow our students who graduate from Thailand to continue higher education in Myanmar and bring educated young people back to the country," she said. According to the Foundation for Rural Youth (FRY), there were about 300,000 migrant children holding Myanmar, Laos and Cambodian nationals who were accompanied by their parents to work in Thailand and those born in the country. In the 2013 academic year, 30% of them entered schools. About 70,000 children have studied in schools under the Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec), 3,000 under the Office of the Non-Formal and Informal Education (NFE), 1,000 under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, and 20,000 at the migrant learning centres. To bring more migrant children into education system, the stakeholders in education have been working together to develop non-formal basic education for non-Thai children. They were the NFE, HWF, FRY and Thai Health Promotion Foundation. Gasinee Fukfon, director of the Mae Sot-district NFE, said that many migrant students suffered several difficulties to enter the formal education system, especially their disfluency in Thai usage. A pilot project on non-formal basic education for non-Thai children was launched since last year in eight learning centres in Tak and other provinces of Chiang Rai, Samut Sakorn, Ranong and Phang-nga to make learning more relevant to migrant students' lives. Among over 900 migrants children applied for the pilot project in Tak, only 201 of them can successfully passed an exam to attend the project which lasted for three academic years or six semesters to complete. "The learning is more flexible than the formal one that the learning day is various from only 3 days to every weekdays depending on students' readiness, teachers can speak Myanmar, and lessons can be adjusted to properly suite students' context," she said. Thai culture and tradition were also taught to them. "Importantly, these group of students, when graduate, will earn the certificate which can be used to apply for the university level in Thailand. So far, as the Asean community draws closer, the educational system should now prepare to handle credit transfers of students in Asean countries," she added. (END) There were more than 500 Myanmar children studied at the Parami learning centre for migrant children in Mae Sot, Tak province and 30 of them chose to study the Myanmar’s non-formal curriculum. Sent from my iPad This e-mail message and any attachments from Post Publishing may contain confidential, proprietary and/or legally privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby warned that unauthorized use, publication, disclosure, disseminate or copying either in whole or in part of said information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email transmission in error, please delete it and notify the sender immediately. Post Publishing accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this e-mail or the consequences of any action taken on the basis of the information transmitted.