Final-Edition

village. When they enrol [their children] in school, [the children] drop out over and over again,
and finally lose interest in schooling”. 80
In other cases, it was reported that families migrating between villages had been unable to reenrol
their children in their new village’s school because they lacked necessary paperwork
from their previous school. Ma Mi, a 33-year-old resident in Maw Gyi village, Yebyu Township,
explained the difficulties her family had faced:
“I am originally from Ah Nin village….Now I have moved to Maw Gyi village to work. I live
at my uncle’s house. I have been here for just over one month. My husband works in this
village as a fisherman. I have four children. Two of them work in Thailand and the other
two have just left school at Ah Nin government school to move here, because we don’t
have a relative in Ah Nin village to leave them with. When we moved we did not ask for a
recommendation letter from the school they left. That is why my two children still have
not enrolled in the school in this village.” 81
ii.
Cross-border migration
Where families migrated across the border to Thailand this was usually noted to lead to
dropout from education, as children would have to transfer to the Thai school system in order
to continue their studies. Mi Dar, a parent of six children from Koh Ann Htaw village,
Kyainnseikyi Township, described her family’s migration across the border:
“We don’t have our own farm, so we have to work on other people’s farms. I have a lot
of children and we couldn’t survive with our small salary, so we migrated to Thailand
for two years and took all of our children with us. All of our children who attended
school had to stop their studies and go with us.” 82
While Mi Dar’s family returned to Koh Ann Htaw village two years later, due to work in
Thailand failing to provide sufficient income, five of her six children did not return to school.
In a case typical of many families, by the time they returned to Koh Ann Htaw her children had
fallen behind their peers, who had now progressed to higher grades. Mi Dar’s son, Mehm Ong
Sorn, 13 years old, explained, “Even if I wanted to continue my education, all my classmates
are now at a high grade. I don’t want to continue studying because I am getting older”. 83
80
WCRP Interview No. 91, Alae Sakhan village, Yebyu Township, 12/11/2014.
81
WCRP Interview No. 70, Maw Gyi village, Yebyu Township, 10/11/2014.
82
WCRP Interview No. 14, Koh Ann Htaw village, Kyainnseikyi Township, 02/11/14.
83
WCRP Interview No. 13, Koh Ann Htaw village, Kyainnseikyi Township, 02/11/14.
WCRP Ι June 2015
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