Shan children’s schools

No.10 - 7/2007
14 July 2007
General

Shan children’s schools
By Christa Thorpe

 
There are hundreds of families in Piang Luang who either cannot afford to send their children to the local Thai government-run school, or cannot gain the proper registration to make them eligible.
 
The Shan community has made this a concern and taken a difficult step in the right direction by building schools where these children, from age two and a half through primary school can learn and stay for eight hours each day while their parents work.
 
The Tambon Administrative Organization (TAO) helps provide half of the funding needed, for the dedicated teachers' salaries, but the schools desperately lack educational resources. 
 
Apparently it is simply because they are not allowed to register as legitimate schools in Thailand (according to government policies) that they are not provided with important educational resources.
 
At one school, there were 273 preschool aged children. Their paths are already marked out for them­a rocky and nearly impassable trek searching for equal education, but this basic right is not easily attainable for the young Shan, and they are hugely disadvantaged next to their Thai counterparts.
 
Furthermore, since the Shan have not been allotted refugee status, they are not eligible to receive at least an amount of aid that supports refugee schooling.
 
Instead, some of the Shan working to help these schools have referred to the disadvantaged families as citizens of no country, for Burma at this point certainly will not have them back, and Thailand will not legitimize the education that their teachers are trying hard to give them now. Because of this, the children may never be able to receive an official primary certificate and will therefore not be able to enter institutions of higher education.
 
What will the next step be, and will Thailand be able to do a better job at recognizing education as a basic human right even for non-citizens, unlike the government of their neighbor Burma who is utterly failing in this regard when it comes to ethnic minorities?