The provision and promotion of migrant education for Burmese vulnerable children along the Thai-Myanmar border is impaired by multiple challenges:
- Lack of coordinated strategic approaches to enhance education quality
- Inconsistent quality standards among Migrant Learning Centres
- Many Migrant Learning Centres lack long-term sustainability plans
- Lack of awareness of available educational pathways and opportunities
- High dropout rates, poverty, and security concerns leave children vulnerable and at-risk
- Absence of data on education quality makes it difcult to identify both school-based and systemic challenges
In response to these challenges, Help without Frontiers collaborates with the Migrant Educational Co-ordination Center (MECC), the Burmese Migrant Workers' Education Committee (BMWEC), the Burmese Migrant Teachers' Association (BMTA), and TeacherFOCUS Myanmar. Since November 2015, migrant education stakeholders have been engaging in a comprehensive process of consultations and workshops with the aim of tackling such challenges. As a result, the Education Quality Framework (EQF) was developed to provide consistent standards of educational quality in Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs). Following a pilot of the tool in the 2016-2017 academic year, the EQF was implemented in 38 MLCs in 2017-2018 with the support of school headmasters.
The tool includes 54 indicators assessing the quality of migrant education realted to the following domains:
- Teacher quality
- Student recognition
- Child Protection
- School Management
- Parent Engagement
Help without Frontiers has adopted the EQF tool in all the Ray of Hope schools. The adoption of the framework has increased the collaboration with the schools to ensure teachers, staff and parents are all committed to ensuring Burmese migrant children and youth receive the highest standards of care and protection. The transparency of such monitoring procedures allow us to do our best to ensure migrant children receive the support they need for quality educational opportunities and brighter futures.
The EQF tool is available in Myanmar language, Thai and English and has been approved by the Royal Thai Government’s Ministry of Education. The EQF specifcally focuses on systems-level structures and contextual issues faced by Migrant Learning Centres.
Please find the EQF briefer document here.
