Myanmar has two national-level matriculation examinations now: one administered by the Ministry of Training underneath the State Administration Council (SAC) navy junta, the opposite carried out by the Ministry of Training, Nationwide Unity Authorities (MOE, NUG), a parallel authorities constituted on April 17, 2021, within the wake of the February 2021 navy coup.
The matriculation examination is the gateway for highschool college students to proceed their research at one of many more than 170 universities in Myanmar. The scholars take the examination as soon as they end their Grade 11, the ultimate grade of highschool. It’s often carried out as soon as per yr in March. As it’s the solely criterion for college admission in Myanmar, dad and mom and college students make investments a lot of their sources in matriculation examinations for future profession views.
The matriculation examination’s historical past will be traced again to the navy coup of 1962. The coup led the nation into state socialism, wherein, the education policy was envisioned in a way that granted superior status to science subjects. To help this coverage, two crucial practices had been adopted. Firstly, the 1964 University Administration Law was enacted, wherein all the colleges and better schooling establishments had been administered by a nationwide degree physique, and the autonomy of universities in recruiting students was restricted. Secondly, the results of the matriculation examination were employed as a single criterion to allocate students to university or specialisation in order that those that earn greater marks may very well be allotted into topics like sciences, medication, maths, and engineering, in accordance with an schooling coverage that privileged sciences.
Moreover, in keeping with the 1973 University Administration Act and the College Admission Utility Pointers revealed yearly, the college itself has no authority over the admission course of and decision-making. The Division of Greater Training underneath the Ministry of Training assigns college students to potential universities and specialisations based mostly on the aggregated marks of their matriculation examination. Consequently, it’s the duty of national-level instructional administration to handle the matriculation examination and, so instructional authorities pay a lot consideration to the safety of the examination. Due to this fact, the occasions, statistics, information, rumours and corruption across the examination often seize the eye of most of the people.
Matriculation examination within the aftermath of the coup
Matriculation examinations couldn’t be carried out by SAC’s schooling paperwork in 2021 because of nationwide demonstrations in opposition to the coup, the participation of civil servants and public service suppliers within the civil disobedience motion, and faculty closures attributable to COVID-19 outbreaks.
Though campus activism and politicising schooling are prevalent within the historical past of Myanmar, it’s the first time in historical past that the matriculation examination has been politicised to such an extent. After the failure of two makes an attempt to reopen faculties in June and November of 2021, the navy’s schooling ministry began to politicise the matriculation examination. It launched its name for utility to the 2022 examination on 11 November 2021.
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The information unfold on media, and there was debate among the many public on whether or not highschool college students ought to register for the examination or not. In the meantime, there are additionally some rumours that the navy’s schooling ministry has threatened the scholars to take exams by warning that these college students who didn’t sit for the examination can be blacklisted within the subsequent yr’s examination. For the navy’s MOE, with the ability to conduct a nationwide examination is a key indicator that the nation was of their management, and so they had been taking good care of the schooling of the general public, attracting home help. Whereas it’s nonetheless difficult for the NUG to have the ability to ship on-ground schooling providers, dad and mom and college students face the dilemma of whether or not to sit down for the examination or boycott it to affirm their solidarity with the country-wide civil disobedience motion.
Recognition of the issue
The announcement of the navy’s name for utility to matriculation examinations and the recognition of debate round it turned the focusing event for the NUG. As a countermove, its schooling ministry launched an announcement on 15 November 2021, 4 days after SAC’s name for examination purposes, saying that all the education activities, grade promotions and matriculation examinations conducted by MOE of SAC are illegitimate as SAC itself has not been recognised by the worldwide neighborhood—nor, most significantly, by the individuals of Myanmar.
Statistics across the matriculation examination carried out by SAC additionally turned a urgent indicator and inspired the decision-makers within the NUG to pay a lot political consideration to it. Within the 2022 matriculation examination administered by the junta, only 281,741 students out of 312,420 registered students took the examination. This represents solely round 30% of the before-coup inhabitants of greater than 900,000 examination takers (see Determine 1 beneath). Such statistics may very well be translated that the remainder 70% of the highschool college students’ inhabitants are becoming a member of the CDM and never cooperating with the navy administration.
Determine 1: Variety of college students taking matriculation examination, 2015–2022
The coverage discourses on examination coverage have additionally highlighted that the statistical figures of navy examinations captured the eye of the individuals in and across the NUG’s schooling ministry. There have been a number of discussions inside the NUG about how you can counter the navy’s matriculation examination. A number of policymakers and educationists supporting NUG and its interim schooling service provision, have frightened about the way forward for these college students who boycotted the navy examination. As well as, they had been anxious that the scholars would contemplate taking the examination carried out by SAC the next yr if NUG authorities couldn’t provoke any actions regarding the matriculation examination. For these policymakers, it signifies that the home legitimacy of the NUG is diminished. Therefore, the statistical figures of navy examination additionally function indicators which push the NUG to lastly prioritise conducting the rivalry matriculation examination.
The beneficial political state of affairs
On the subject of politicising the matriculation examination, it’s the national mood that almost all pressed the NUG administration to conduct a rival matriculation examination. The nationwide temper of post-coup Myanmar relating to the military-conducted matriculation examination is mirrored within the country-wide civil disobedience motion (CDM). under which civil servants refused to work under the military and people were not cooperating with its administration.
Though the marketing campaign was first kicked off by healthcare staff, academics and administrative employees within the schooling sector shared the vast majority of the CDM inhabitants. Initially, it’s estimated that more than 300,000 education workers participated in CDM. As of April 2021, in keeping with ISP Myanmar, the navy has launched that greater than 27% of major and secondary schooling employees and 56% of tertiary schooling employees are absent at their office—that means that they’ve joined the CDM.
A number of universities declared themselves as CDM universities and constituted ‘Interim College Councils’ to handle the affairs of the college themselves. Main and secondary schooling employees, constituting township schooling boards, refusing to observe navy orders. As of Oct 2021, 279 township education boards (out of 330 townships across the country) and 235 university councils (out of 297 universities across the country) are affiliated with the NUG.
In the meantime, a majority of the scholar inhabitants in major, secondary and tertiary schooling refused to attend the faculties reopened by the navy. Solely a quarter of 12 million primary and secondary students and very few university students enrolled for the new school year in June 2021, both because of displaying their solidarity with CDM or insufficient COVID-19 prevention measures ready by navy administration in school.
This country-wide CDM precipitated the NUG not solely to offer schooling providers but in addition to pay good consideration to the navy’s schooling insurance policies and to counterattack if crucial. It’s because such an motion may gasoline the momentum of CDM and accumulate home help for the NUG. By the point the navy’s schooling ministry introduced the matriculation examination as aforementioned, the NUG had been alarmed to give attention to it and to conduct their very own nationally standardised examination.
Along with the nationwide temper, the support of the interest groups encourages the NUG to prioritise conducting a rival matriculation examination. Some interim college councils that are affiliated with MOE, NUG, have publicly introduced that the university would not recognise the matriculation examination conducted by SAC in 2022 and wouldn’t enable enrolling these college students taking the 2022 examination.
As an illustration, greater than 20 councils of technological universities and students’ unions launched statements unrecognizing the examinations underneath SAC and have urged the dad and mom and college students to not sit for the examination as a way to in opposition to the navy regime and preserve proceed the country-wide civil disobedience motion. Such help from its affiliated college councils and pupil unions pressed the NUG to provoke a rival examination to counter the navy administration. Furthermore, it’s probably that the cupboard of NUG assumed that conducting such matriculation examination would serve its personal political pursuits, fuelling the continued nationwide CDM and thereafter rising its legitimacy domestically.
A Coverage Window
Policy entrepreneurs — people who desire to invest his/her resources in return for the future policy they favour, are important within the Myanmar examination case. They’re invisible individuals— principally teams of students, educationists and consultants in evaluation and examination. They boycotted the navy’s instructional actions, anonymously affiliated with the NUG’s schooling ministry, and had been concerned in its totally different schooling actions.
They’ve put their sources akin to time, information and expertise into totally different NUG schooling actions as a technique to present their opposition to the navy coup. These consultants in evaluation and examination helped draft an evaluation coverage for the NUG’s home-based schooling program. Their efforts have been a major consider pushing the NUG to contemplate conducting its personal matriculation examination. Earlier than the navy deliberate to conduct the matriculation examination, they sought to advocate that the NUG conduct or at the very least contemplate conducting the matriculation examination. For them, it’s believed that the NUG schooling ministry wanted to be proactive in contemplating conducting a rival matriculation examination because the navy would take political benefits from the examination. When the navy determined to conduct the 2022 matriculation examination in November 2021, it was a politically favourable time or a policy window for these evaluation teachers to push their pet proposal of creating a NUG matriculation examination.
Furthermore, my evaluation of the coverage paperwork additionally means that the evaluation consultants developed the NUG’s matriculation examination coverage proposal to pertain to some standards akin to technical feasibility, congruence with the values of community members and anticipation of future constraints such as budget and receptivity of the public and politicians amidst political instabilities. First, the evaluation coverage got here together with two-hour-long multiple-choice questions that are environment friendly in marking, and related for interim resistance governments like MOE, NUG to manage nicely. Previously, the matriculation examination had a number of essay-type questions which required hundreds of academics to collect in a selected college for a number of days to mark and compile knowledge. This might not be the case for the NUG’s examination as a result of it’s based mostly on multiple-choice gadgets which may very well be simply marked.
Moreover, by contemplating the NUG’s restricted on-ground schooling providers and the proximity of the scholars to battle, the coverage proposed each internet-based and paper-based assessments at on-ground evaluation centres. It permits college students to take the examination at a number of examination durations inside a yr—in 2023, in February and August—at their comfort.
As well as, an enormous shift from navy matriculation is that it assured to evaluate the higher-order pondering akin to utility, analytical pondering and artistic problem-solving expertise of Bloom’s Taxonomy with a competency-based grading system. That is in congruence with the values of neighborhood members, because the schooling neighborhood in Myanmar has been lengthy for a paradigm shift in evaluation in Myanmar from memorisation-based to competency-based evaluation in the course of the nation’s schooling reform interval throughout 2011–2021. In an interview, one neighborhood arithmetic trainer talked about that he’s receptive to the query sort of the NUG’s examination, particularly for the arithmetic topics, as a result of, for instance, in Geometry, the examination doesn’t require college students to jog down the identify of a theorem precisely as within the before-coup examination, which renders memorisation as an alternative of logical reasoning.
Most significantly, additionally it is deemed that the matriculation examination proposal anticipated the longer term constraints of public acceptability. In an interview with an individual from a township schooling board, constituted within the post-coup interval, he talked about that the people who find themselves engaged on on-ground schooling within the conflict-affected areas accepted that they want a matriculation examination which isn’t administered by SAC.
You will need to observe right here that among the coverage entrepreneurs across the NUG ministry of schooling had been additionally concerned in township schooling boards, and, for them, it signifies that a rivalry examination would fill this hole and will probably enhance their home legitimacy. Therefore, the coverage answer hooked up to the requirement of examination for greater than 70% of the highschool pupil inhabitants who boycotted the SAC’s examination and countering SAC’s examination lastly led to opening a coverage window for the NUG to conduct its personal matriculation examination.
The affect on college students
In the end, college students are these most impacted by how Myanmar’s schooling system has been affected by the 2021 coup. The navy killed and detained academics and college students, and used schools and university campuses as bases for military operations. It then prolonged its manipulation to matriculation examination by way of politicisation. To counter such an issue, when the political local weather is beneficial and coverage options can be found, the NUG’s schooling ministry has initiated matriculation examinations as a part of its political battles with the SAC.
Each the SAC and NUG exams have good and weak factors. Firstly, taking SAC’s examination is incompatible with society’s values and the CDM. Mother and father throughout Myanmar boycotted the military-led education and didn’t let their youngsters take the matriculation examination to show their solidarity with the country-wide CDM or because they do not believe in the quality of teachers under the military education system. However, taking the NUG’s examination would possibly result in safety considerations and to conditions the place future schooling pathways with the longer term recognition of NUG-issued credentials being unsure Consequently, the scholars face ambiguity about how you can proceed with their instructional pathways. (On the time of writing, the NUG’s schooling ministry has carried out their model of the matriculation examination twice, and 16 universities affiliated with them recently welcomed the new students.)
Such a state of affairs additionally exacerbates the disparity among the many college students. Some college students, who may afford it, determined to arrange for internationally recognised certificates akin to GED and IGCSE to keep away from the dilemma. In the meantime, others drop out of faculty, take up arms, or flee because of battle of their areas. As a consequence, the scholars lose their hopes and future, resulting in the deterioration of human capital and the longer term growth of Myanmar.