Context: Thailand adopted the Education for All (EFA) policy in 1990, and Thai law stipulates that every child, regardless of nationality or legal status, has the right to 15 years of free basic education. However, in 2015, over 60 per cent of migrant children (more than 200,000 individuals) were not attending school.
In 2009, the Foundation for Rural Youth (FRY), a Thai civil society organization (CSO), began to identify and reach out to migrant children in the community in the Bang Khun Tian district of Bangkok, which is host to a large number of migrants, and has 16 schools under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA). While their parents were working, migrant children were left on their own, did not receive any form of education, and, as a result, lagged behind in social and cognitive skill development, and faced risks of exploitation and abuse.
Implementation of programme/ initiative: The Bang Khun Thian model, developed by FRY, and supported by Save the Children and World Education (WE), applies a holistic and comprehensive approach to supporting migrant children to access and, importantly, stay in schools beyond kindergarten and primary school. The model has three pillars:
- Community: FRY undertakes mapping and surveys to collect up-to-date data on migrant children to ensure that local governments and CSOs include migrant children in schools. In those communities with out-of-school migrant children, FRY reaches out to the communities and informs migrant students and their families about rights to free education in Thailand, for example through events and exhibitions. FRY also gives financial support to those children and youth who take part in the FRY academic preparation programme (between 6-24 months), which includes learning of Thai language.
- School: FRY collaborates with administrators and teachers to increase their understanding and strengthen their capacity to effectively integrate migrant children into their curricula and classrooms. Some teachers and education bureaucrats find it challenging to work with undocumented migrant children in their school systems, so FRY plays a supporting role after initial enrollment, and acts as a facilitator between the school and the family.
- Policy: FRY advocates with BMA and the Education Service Administrative Office (ESAO) to strengthen and improve the implementation of the EFA policy for migrant children.
Main challenges: In 2019, migrant children continued to be the largest group of children out of school in Thailand, with some estimates suggesting that half of all migrant children at the time – about 200,000 – were excluded from formal and informal education.
Translating the EFA policy into practice is still challenging for some schools, some of which continue to be reluctant to accept students who do not have documents, despite awareness-raising and capacity building activities for school administrators. In addition, drop-out rates for older migrant students (aged 13–15 years) continue to be high.
Results achieved: Despite the aforementioned challenges, the understanding and implementation of the EFA policy by school administrators and teachers has increased dramatically in BMA schools, as a result of BMA advice, guidelines and a manual on enrolment procedures.
This has resulted in concrete changes, with significantly more migrant children having access to education in Greater Bangkok: between 2009 and 2015, the number of students with a migration background in BMA schools increased by 76 per cent, reaching well over 2,000 individuals.
FRY has been instrumental in ensuring that the EFA policy has been rendered into practice, by making migrant children and their families aware of their educational rights and opportunities, facilitating access to BMA schools, liaising with schools and families, and advocating with BMA to put measures in place to ensure that school administrators and teachers comply with EFA policy.
Moving Forward: The Bang Khun Tian model has great potential to ensure that many more migrant children play an integral role in schools in Thailand. However, there is still a great need to ensure that all school officials automatically accept undocumented children into their schools. ESAO can play a bigger role in clarifying and monitoring EFA policy implementation, as can Community Learning Centres, by preparing migrant children to enter the formal education system in Thailand, including by providing lessons in Thai language. A key element in moving forward is focusing on achieving concrete results, while maintaining dynamism; this is particularly important in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Replicability: The EFA policy, if rendered into practice, has considerable potential to vastly increase lawful access to education and improved quality of life for migrant children across Thailand. The FRY Bang Khun Thian Model, because of its holistic and comprehensive approach, can be replicated and tailored to local contexts, by meaningfully involving migrant children, their families, local government, the ESAO (or equivalent), school administrators and teachers.
Acknowledgement:
This good practice was kindly prepared by Mr. Klaus Dik Nielsen.
References:
https://worlded.org/international/
http://thailand.worlded.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MESR-Full-Report.pdf
https://bangkok.unesco.org/content/bridging-education-systems-migrant-children-thailand-and-myanmar
Project Details
Date: October 5, 2021