This article was first published on Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS).
Education in Myanmar has deteriorated significantly since the 2021 military coup, causing widespread displacement both within the country and across its borders, limiting access to education for many children and youth. Domestically, thousands of teachers left their posts as part of the Civil Disobedience Movement, acting on moral convictions to protest against the junta. At the same time, many students refused to enroll in junta-controlled schools. As a result, the quality of education has sharply declined and is caught in a paradox: while learning is the only path toward a stable future, the classroom has become a frontline where political struggle and physical violence threaten to leave an entire generation behind.
Key takeaways:
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The 2021 coup severely worsened Myanmar’s education, shutting schools, disrupting teaching, and leaving a large portion of the country’s youth without access to stable and quality basic education.
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The coup-driven displacement of civilians into Bangladesh, Thailand, and India has created new educational challenges for refugee children, who often face limited access to formal schooling and long-term learning disruptions.
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The post-coup non-state education has become embedded in Myanmar’s resistance struggle, with groups such as the NUG and ethnic education departments using education to preserve identity, assert political legitimacy, and challenge centralized military control, potentially shaping both conflict dynamics and future nation-building.
Myanmar’s return to military rule following the February 2021 coup has resulted in widespread political repression, violent conflict, and institutional collapse. The country’s liberalization, initiated in 2011, ended abruptly when the military rejected the 2020 election results—which had represented the will of the people, despite some flaws—and detained elected leaders. The exile National Unity Government (NUG), which was formed after the coup as the pro-democracy parallel government, continues to resist the junta, supported by local People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs).
By 2024, a report claimed that the junta had full control of only about 21% of the territory, while PDFs and EAOs held approximately 42%, and the rest was contested. The proportion of territory under control is dynamic and subject to change over time due to ongoing armed conflicts. Meanwhile, the conflict is intense nationwide, except in a few cities where the junta maintains full control. According to ANFREL, over 32,000 conflict-related deaths have been recorded between April 2022 and September 2025, including 8,000 civilians, alongside 4 million internally displaced persons. The March 2025 earthquake in Sagaing further exacerbated the crisis, killing 3,800 people and injuring more than 5,000. Civil society organizations, teachers, and local NGOs, once key partners in democratic development, now operate in exile or underground, struggling to deliver essential services such as education and healthcare.
Over seven decades of conflict, interrupted only by Myanmar’s brief opening in the 2010s, compounded by the 2021 coup, have severely impacted the country, leading to the deterioration of public services, increased poverty, and widespread displacement. The ongoing intensive armed conflict following the coup has resulted in a rise in the number of children out of learning, an expansion of non-state educational initiatives, and the emergence of new stakeholders in the educational sector.
The prolonged conflicts in Myanmar have been intertwined with issues of nationalism, ethnicity, and religion, alongside a struggle for authority among Myanmar’s elite. This has involved attempts to impose, as well as resist, Buddhist-Bamar policies on ethnic and religious minorities. Education in Myanmar has been a component of this struggle. Myanmar continues to implement a centralized education system, functioning as a mechanism of authority assertion, managed by the Ministry of Education in Naypyidaw. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 coup, the Ministry oversaw over 45,000 schools and 9 million students in 2019-2020. The 2014 National Education Law, amended in 2015, recognized nine types of schools: government schools; government-aided schools; schools operated by regional organizations; private schools; monastic schools; philanthropic schools; special education schools; mobile and emergency schools; and schools run by the Ministry of Education or other ministries. While the law permits emergency schools for conflict-affected children, these must fall under “State” authority. This requirement excludes schools that are not under state control and limits their access to further educational and employment opportunities within “State” departments. In regions experiencing conflict and areas under the control of armed groups, non-state educational providers have emerged as the primary sources of education. Prior to the 2021 coup, it is estimated that over 220,000 students had access to various non-state education providers.
Impacts of the 2021 coup on the education system
Since Myanmar’s military coup, the country’s education system has been devastated. Targeted attacks on schools, politicization of curricula, and mass exodus of teachers have crippled the system. Myanmar Witness documented 174 incidents of violence against schools as of July 2024, while GCPEA recorded over 245 attacks and 190 cases of military use of educational facilities. Schools are often used as military bases, even in urban areas, and Radio Free Asia notes nearly 200 schools have been hit by junta airstrikes, making classrooms unsafe spaces.
Moreover, the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), in which teachers and students walked away from state institutions to oppose the military, has further exacerbated the crisis. By May 2021, roughly 31% of basic education teachers and 69% of higher education faculty had been suspended for participating in the CDM. The World Bank reveals that the military fired around 30% of the teaching workforce who had participated in CDM. Indeed, during the pandemic, Myanmar’s public schools were closed for 532 days (the longest in East Asia and the Pacific), causing an average loss of 3.5 years of education per child.
Finally, despite the extension of school levels from Grades 1-11 to include Kindergarten and Grades 1-12, which is expected to increase the student population due to the longer duration of schooling, the total student population in junta-controlled basic schools decreased by nearly 2 million students. This has happened because, under military control, education has become a tool of propaganda. Many parents and students refuse to participate on moral grounds, viewing attendance as legitimizing the regime. Newly appointed teachers are untrained, politically aligned with the junta, and required to pledge allegiance, while students report that schools no longer teach critical thinking or ethical reasoning. Teachers face excessive workloads, and quality has plummeted.
Since the onset of the conflict in 2021, non-state educational initiatives have expanded not only in ethnic minority areas but also in Bamar-dominated regions, as well as through online platforms. This expansion aims to sustain educational opportunities for conflict-affected children and to assert governance by resistance groups through community-based efforts. At the 6th Union Parliament Meeting in February 2024, the NUG reported the establishment of Township Education Boards in 304 townships, facilitating physical learning opportunities for around 700,000 students with the support of around 40,000 teachers. Additionally, 75 online-based schools were established, serving around 90,000 students and employing 4,000 teachers, specifically for those residing under the junta’s control. In the 2023-2024 academic year, an estimated over 360,000 students were enrolled in the 4,100 schools administered by ethnic education departments. Based on available data, it is likely that the number of schools and students in certain ethnic education departments has doubled since the coup. The private school sector also experienced an increase of approximately 200 schools and 100,000 students. Although the number of monastic schools decreased from 1,506 to 1,388, the monastic education system also saw an increase of over 33,000 secular students.
Cross-border dimension
The education crisis for Burmese students extends beyond Myanmar’s borders. Many displaced Burmese, who remain near the border with Thailand, Bangladesh and India, struggle to access education. Thailand has long hosted displaced Burmese due to Myanmar’s chronic political instability and persecution of minorities. The 2,400 km Thai-Myanmar border is one of the world’s most important migration routes, and, since the 2021 military takeover, it has experienced ever larger movements of people fleeing from Myanmar.
In 2023 alone, approximately 1.3 million Myanmar migrants entered Thailand, and over 4 million are now in the country, with half undocumented. Displaced migrants face restricted movement, limited access to basic services, and are often denied entry to refugee camps. Many people face barriers to education due to legal status, language, and financial issues. In Tak Province, near the border, 63 Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs) were registered with local authorities as of June 2024, including 45 in Mae Sot District. Since the 2021 coup, enrolment in these centers has doubled, with roughly 18,500 students, 910 teachers, and 149 staff. Nonetheless, the situation has been further exacerbated by the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID funding, leaving critical educational gaps.
According to UNHCR, over 61,000 individuals from Myanmar were displaced and remained in India between January 2021 and September 2025. Despite the central government’s restrictive policies, the Mizoram State government permitted displaced children to enroll in public schools. However, due to differences in educational systems and some parents’ preference for their children to follow the Myanmar curriculum, several self-initiated learning centers were established in refugee camps within Mizoram State. In 2024, the Institute of Chin Affairs supported teachers’ stipends, learning materials, and school facilities for over 5,000 displaced children in Mizoram. In January 2025, the Chinland Council’s education department reported operating more than 40 learning centers serving over 3,300 displaced children, while other local groups established over 40 schools for more than 1,000 migrant children in the state. However, students in these learning centers encounter a multitude of challenges, including the absence of identity documents, which are essential for formal records of their education; limited opportunities for further education; substandard teaching quality and infrastructure; and inadequate career support.
At the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, nearly one million Rohingya individuals have sought refuge since 2016. The Bangladesh government has not granted refugee status to over 800,000 Rohingya, except for those who have been in Bangladesh since 1991. Consequently, these individuals, including an estimated 437,000 school-aged children, have been denied access to formal education. In response, the Rohingya community, along with international and non-governmental organizations, has established various learning centers. These include Child-Friendly Spaces (particularly for early childhood education established by NGOs), Madrasas (Islamic religious schools), Maktabs (small religious education centers), learning activities conducted by the General Education Networks, and private centers operated by individuals. By 2025, it is estimated that over 300,000 children from the school-aged population will attend more than 5,000 learning centers within the refugee camps. The majority of these centers operate with limited resources, facing challenges such as inadequate funding and facilities, often utilizing family shelters as makeshift classrooms.
Opportunities, challenges and potential implications
According to the above data for inside Myanmar, in 2023-2024, over 8.9 million children had access to various learning platforms. This figure included over 7 million children in schools controlled by the junta, 290,000 children in the monastic education system, 370,000 in private schools, 730,000 students in schools recognized by the NUG and community-based schools, 96,000 students in NUG-affiliated online schools, and 369,000 in ethnic education departments. However, the situation on the ground is complex and dynamic, with some schools operating for only a few weeks during the academic year and certain learning platforms potentially unable to continue in the next academic year due to ongoing conflicts. In the academic year 2025-2026, of the estimated 13 million school-aged children in Myanmar, only 6.1 million were enrolled in schools under junta control. This statistic indicates that approximately half of the school-aged population is not participating in the formal education system in Myanmar. Over 500,000 school-aged children residing outside Myanmar, particularly in regions bordering India, Bangladesh, and Thailand, also face limited access to education due to political restrictions and insufficient funding for educational initiatives.
While some of these out-of-formal-school children inside Myanmar may have access to alternative non-state educational services, aside from the private school sector, which is accessible only to a limited number of children with substantial financial resources, these non-state services face significant resource constraints and security threats from the junta. These challenges include a shortage of competent and qualified educators, limited availability of textbooks and teacher handbooks, high student dropout rate, and inadequate infrastructure.
Some community-based schools may be affiliated with ethnic education departments and the NUG, but the majority receive very limited financial and technical support. For example, in Chin State, the education minister of the Chinland Government noted that approximately 70% of volunteer teachers in community-based schools lack formal teaching training. These non-state educational services also consistently face difficulties in paying teachers’ salaries, posing significant challenges to their long-term sustainability and leading to high teacher turnover and operational difficulties. Subsequently, uncertain educational and vocational pathways through these services, coupled with increasing economic hardships, contribute to early student dropout rates, with the majority of children not advancing to high school education. Additionally, due to ongoing threats of junta airstrikes, many non-state educational service providers must avoid using easily identifiable infrastructure, such as school buildings, and operate in substandard or limited facilities.
In addition to their operational challenges, a critical question remains: whether these various educational initiatives can either exacerbate the ongoing conflict or enhance social cohesion within the country. Given that education, particularly the content and knowledge imparted to children in a culturally and ideologically divided society, can either escalate or mitigate ongoing conflicts, it is imperative to cautiously and continuously monitor the potential implications of these fragmented educational practices for the conflict.