The new mainstream: The rise of parallel education providers in Thailand in the wake Myanmar’s ongoing coup d’état

• In Event: The Power of Protest in Myanmar: Building Alternatives to Military Dictatorship through Education

Proposal

For more than three decades a network of Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs) has existed to provide education to the children of migrant workers from Myanmar living in Thailand. These complementary ‘schools’ provide mother tongue-based education largely using curriculum from Myanmar. In 2023 the enrollment at MLCs increased by more than 60% in a single year (MECC, 2023). In fulfillment of Thailand’s Education for All policy, Thai public schools on the Thai-Myanmar border are at full capacity. Schools in the nine ‘temporary shelters’ (refugee camps) along the Thai-Myanmar border are building additional classrooms and hosting classes in any available spaces. Whether by conflict and political-related push factors or by opportunity-related pull factors, families from Myanmar continue to take active steps away from education under the auspices of the military dictatorship. This continues to overwhelm parallel systems as they become the de facto mainstream education providers for children from Myanmar.

This presentation focuses on the critical role of teachers in these contexts. Education has been politized to the point where being a teacher in a parallel system is an act of protest. Being a teacher on the Thai-Myanmar border is viewed more as an act of service and less as a career: this is true for both migrant teachers (Tyrosvoutis, 2019) and refugee teachers (Tyrosvoutis, 2024). The trauma inflicted by the coup d’état on children is well documented (Zar, Zaw & Castello, 2021; Lowe, Win, & Tyrosvoutis, 2022). Teachers, whether sufficiently prepared or not, have been forced to take on numerous additional roles supporting the emotional needs of their students. At the same time, migrant educators are increasingly required to teach new materials as more and more MLCs are adopting international curricula to build new educational bridges for their students. This has included a rise in General Education Development (GED) programs, post-secondary course offerings, and interim online education providers. Access to legal documentation, something teachers are powerless to receive or provide, remains the most significant barrier to tertiary education. This new educational frontier is fraught with uncertainty, but again, migrant educational stakeholders would rather navigate this terrain rather than participate in the military regime’s education system.

Families from Myanmar continue to, quite literally, vote with their feet by leaving their home country for their children to access parallel education systems abroad. Education has long been a catalyst for social change and drastic change is needed for the people of Myanmar. At the heart of education will always be teachers and right now more than ever teachers and the parallel education systems that support them need international attention and action to continue their educational protest.

Author

• Greg Tyrosvoutis, The Inclusive Education Foundation