Over the last few months I have been working together with a small local community-based organisation on a pilot program aimed at enabling more migrant children of pre-school age to enrol in the Thai education system. Most of the organisations working to support migrant education here on the border concentrate on the older students, and there has been very little attention paid to the early years of schooling. This is why VSO decided to carry out the Early Childhood Development project in the first place, as they recognised this gap in provision for the youngest children.
For migrant children whose families are likely to be here in Thailand long term, the best hope for future integration in society is through successful schooling in the Thai education system. Many migrant children begin their education in migrant learning centres and later attempt to transfer into Thai schools. One of the biggest challenges for them is attaining the required level of Thai language.
The organisation that I have been collaborating with over the last few months - Migrant Education - supports a number of migrant learning centres in and around Mae Sot. They place particular emphasis on helping the migrant learning centres to prepare students for successful transition into Thai schools.
The pilot program aims to get more migrant children into the Thai system right at the beginning of their schooling. We have been working together with the local Ministry of Interior education department in one of the sub-district areas where I am doing my project to explore ways to increase the capacity of the two child-care and development centres to enrol more migrant children over the next few years.
As is to be expected when working with government departments, the whole process is taking rather longer than we anticipated, and we are still ironing out the final details of the working agreement. We are also very conscious of the great uncertainty surrounding the future for migrants due to the recent political changes here in Thailand. It is far from clear whether migrant children will continue to be permitted the level of access to education in the Thai system that they were granted under the Education for All policy.
Nevertheless, we are persisting, driven by a firm belief in the power of education to bring about lasting and positive change. This is a belief that has been echoed by many voices in recent weeks. As the Millennium Development Goals are drawing to a close, there seems to be a flurry of attention given to goals not yet reached. Currently, 58 million children worldwide remain out of school, and Unesco recently gave a very pessimistic prediction about the possibility of achieving the key MD goal of universal primary education by 2015.
However, despite this bleak outlook, there are many examples of countries, each facing their own particular challenges, that have shown the political will to bring about change. In Ghana, the number of children enrolled in school increased from 2.4 million in 1999 to 4.1 million last year, as a result of a doubling in spending on education. Other actions taken by governments around the world to increase enrolment levels include a drive in Morocco to support ethnic and linguistic minorities by introducing the teaching of the local language in primary schools; the abolition of school fees in Burundi; and the introduction of a new curriculum in Vietnam focused on disadvantaged pupils. (See The Guardian - Global Development- Thursday 26 June 2014).
Of course, just getting children into school is only a first step. Measures also need to be taken to ensure that they are able to continue their schooling, and that the education that is provided is of a quality that will provide them with the skills and knowledge that they need to succeed in life.
I am very conscious that the work that I am involved with is the tiniest of tiny drops in the ocean of the problem to be tackled. However, the examples of the countries above illustrate what can be achieved when the political will is there. Unesco's director general, Irina Bokova, called on others to learn from the experiences of countries like Burundi and Ghana: "Real progress is possible and we owe it to children to pursue it."
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