Digging deeper into monastic schools

Recently, we shared about a new project that Better Burma is taking on: support to monastic schools. Our team is still working on its comprehensive needs assessment, and shares the following report now:

“According to Myanmar Education Consortium, monastic education schools provide free education to children and currently attract enrollments from poor, ethnic and migrant communities. Monastic education schools also refer to the nunnery schools as well. Monastic schools and nunnery schools often provide the children from poor families with free education and accommodation. The boarding children in these monastic schools and nunnery schools are mostly ethnic children from the unstable and remote ethnic conflict zones. [According to the Burnet Education's data, the monastic school system in Myanmar operates over 1,700 schools catering for over 300,000 children.] These days, these philanthropist schools are facing a crisis to survive due to the covid-19 and the military coup. Since the country is suffering from the economic crisis and civil war across the country, there has been an increasing number of children from the refugee families in the monastic schools. In the meantime, for the abbots and head nuns who run these schools have faced decreasing support from lay sponsors solely due to the economic crisis.

Monastic schools and Nunnery schools are run by the residing monks and head nuns. They hire local volunteers by giving stipends to teach the children from poor families. For the students, they do not need to cover the costs of any tuition fees or teaching materials because the monks and nuns provide them free. In regular days, the monks and nuns are able to benefit from donations to cover such things as stationary and food. But after the covid-19 and coup, local contributions become less and less. Previously, the National Government Education Ministry was able to provide stipends for monastic teachers and teaching materials. However after the coup, this support was stopped by the junta and hence, the monastic and nunnery schools are facing an existential threat. They now have a big challenge to even survive and sustain while continuing to provide free education from the poor and low income families.”