Monitoring the implementation of the Education For All Action Plan in Myanmar

The present study tried to find out the implementation status of National Action Plan (NAP) for Education for All (EFA) in Myanmar by reviewing the achievement of EFA core indicators (CI). This was done by reviewing the EFA reports of the two latest years available, in this instance, the NAP 2003 and the only available later report, the Mid-decade Assessment Report 2007. This was supplemented by findings from, review of records and registers of five schools, household survey of an urban and a rural area, interview of a National EFA Team member, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with teachers and community members and Field observations made by the researcher. The selection of schools and areas for household survey were carried out by means of stratified random sampling. Purposive sampling was used in selecting participants for FGDs. It was found that out of the 18 CI, Myanmar was able to report achievement of the target in 10 even though some were of doubtful accuracy and reliability, could not achieve target in 4 and data was not available for the remaining 4. The data reported for Myanmar in the UNESCO Global Monitoring Reports were also used to check the achievements of CI. From these data Myanmar was found to be in the lower middle part of the worldwide spectrum of EFA achievement with the possibility of not achieving some indicators by the year 2015. An interview of a member of the EFA team and Focus Group Discussions with selected teachers, PTA and community elders were also conducted to identify the difficulties, constraints and limitations met in implementation and monitoring the EFA activities. A feasible set of recommendations were then made based upon the difficulties, constraints and limitations identified above, with the aim of fostering greater achievement in coming years.