At 8am on a typical school day, children, wearing their national costumes, line up and sing the Thai national anthem as the Thai flag is hoisted. In class, they study every subject in Thai with Thai teachers. At lunch, they enjoy local food. On Teachers’ Day, alumni revisit their teachers, presenting them with a jasmine garland.
On Tuesdays, students are encouraged to wear their national costumes.
Without nationalities, children of migrant workers in Thailand are often branded as marginal people. But when it comes to education, the young members of the minority group are entitled to 15 years of standard education following the Ministry of Education’s initiative enacted in 2006 to permit all stateless kids — either with or without legal identification documents — to sit down in a classroom with Thai students at both public and private schools nationwide.
The recent government plan to cut educational support to migrant workers’ children has triggered worry. The Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec) expects the number of foreign students to increase to 250,000 within three years, which has led the commission to reconsider the government’s policy of offering free education. Cutting funding for foreign students would limit their access to schooling and 65,000 stateless kids in the country would be required to pay for their school uniforms, textbooks and other developmental activities.
Such a budget-cutting policy is just a blueprint and, fortunately, has yet to affect schools with stateless kids in Thailand, among them being Wat Sirimongkol School in Samut Sakhon. The province, which exports the highest amount of seafood in the country, is home to approximately 220,000 migrant workers who are employed in seafood processing factories.
A lot of schools located in foreign labour-populated areas are not too fond of diversity, unlike Wat Sirimongkol School. The public school is a lifeline to working-class migrants. Not only are the Burmese parents at ease leaving their children during the day, but the children are also promised with access to free schooling like any Thai students.
Wilaiwan Noomdee, a 58-year-old teacher, has been teaching at the school since 1984 when only Thai students attended. She remembers the dismay among the Thai parents when in 2006 the school accepted stateless students to study in the same rooms with Thai students.
“Many of the parents moved out their children to other schools,” she recounted. “At the same time, more
Burmese students came in. It gradually caused the number of Burmese students to surpass the number of Thai students.”
As a Thai teacher who has changed course to be responsible for teaching stateless kids, Wilaiwan always admires them for their industriousness and gratitude.
Wilaiwan has never treated them as secondary. She also sees no difference in their academic performance compared with that of Thai students. The teacher also says the school has yet to be affected by the government’s educational budget-cutting plan for stateless students.
“I never thought that they were inferior to Thai students in any aspect,” she said. “They are just like Thai kids.”
Wat Sirimongkol School is known among the Burmese parents as the most prestigious school in the area for their children to get an education. The school operates to the same curriculum that every Thai school follows, providing education from kindergarten to Prathom 6 (equivalent to Grade Six). The current semester has 254 students with the biggest population being Burmese of Mon descent, and 16 full-time Thai teachers. There are only 19 Thai students in the school.
Every new student is required to start from Prathom 1 regardless of age as it is essential for each to have a strong foundation in the Thai language before being exposed to more courses taught in Thai. The oldest students in the classrooms are 18 years old.
On Tuesdays, the school gets colourful and festive as students are encouraged to wear their national outfits to celebrate cultural pride. The programme was implemented to reinforce children of different backgrounds. While Burmese students love wearing green sarongs, Burmese students of Mon descent wear red ones.
The school is regarded as a model school for children of non-Thai labourers. Over the years, teachers from various schools at a preliminary stage of amalgamating stateless kids in their schools, have visited Wat Sirimongkol School to look at the work and follow suit.
Surachai (last name withheld), a 41-year-old Burmese, has been working as a teacher and student consultant at the school for more than a year. He believes in the power of education especially for the underprivileged young.
“Giving these kids schooling prevents child labour and social problems,” he said. “Kids with an education will be easy to control. The problems of human trafficking, prostitution and panhandling will be eliminated.”
Surachai also teaches the Burmese language and culture to help students retain their identity and value.
“Now they can speak Thai very well,” he said, referring to Burmese students. “But some students have started to forget their own language.”
Students at Wat Sirimongkol School take different paths after their schooling. Most choose to end their education after Prathom 6, believing that the knowledge suffices surviving in Thailand.
Some are thrust into their family’s financial predicament in the middle of schooling, causing them to terminate their academic paths. Only a small number of students seek secondary education.
Kluay, a 14-year-old Prathom 4 Burmese student of Mon descent, is one of the few who is pursuing education to the fullest. She is an avid student who wants to see how far an education will take her.
“I want to continue studying Matthayom 1 at some school,” she said. “I want to be a nurse or a flight attendant.”
Kluay relocated to Thailand when she was five and lives with her sister.
Her father became a monk in Myanmar, while her mother has passed away. No one in her family has had a chance to study.
She is determined to follow not only her dreams but her siblings, as well.
“My family wants me to have a better life than them,” she said. “As the youngest in the family, they want me to study. They want me to have a good future. And they do not want to be looked down on by other people.” However, living in Thailand has never made her feel less of a person.
“You [Thai people] are a human and so am I,” she said. “At school, we do the same things regardless of where we come from. We just do not speak the same language. You have a heart.”
Stateless students at Wat Sirimongkol School study all subjects with Thai teachers.
Kids play together, regardless of their nationalities.
Students say grace before enjoying a Thai lunch.
