Two Minbya Twsp high schools in need of classrooms and teachers

By DMG 12 Jun 2022

DMG Newsroom
12 June 2022, Minbya

Grade 11 students at a high school in Arakan State’s Minbya Township are reportedly struggling to learn due to the lack of a school building to accommodate them.

There is only a building for Grade 10 students at the school in Shwekyan village. For Grade 11 students, the Ministry of Education has not yet built a new building, making it difficult for the students to study, according to school officials.

There are 18 Grade 11 students at the school, and with no school building for them, they have to study in a makeshift classroom built of old tarpaulin and thatched roofs, said U Soe Myint, a schoolteacher from Shwekyan high school.

As a result, “the school may be closed on rainy days,” he told DMG.

U Soe Myint said there are seven vacancies for senior assistant teachers at the high school, and only one of them has been filled by the Ministry of Education so far. He continued that although school officials had repeatedly asked the government for a new school building, nothing had changed.

“The classroom is cramped and the students are not interested in studying,” Ma Myint Myint Htay, a Grade 11 student, told DMG. “When it rains around us, we get soaking wet. Like other students, we want to study in a large classroom.”

In total, there are 218 primary students, 84 middle students and 43 high students at the school in Shwekyan village.

Elsewhere, there are difficulties for students studying at the Basic Education High School (BEHS) in Minbya Township’s Kyeinchaung village, said U Aung Thein Tun, the school’s headmaster.

“The roof of the school collapsed due to a storm in May, and we submitted a letter to seek a budget allocation to repair the damaged school to the township education officer’s office,” he said. “But we had to repair the damaged school on a self-reliant basis ahead of the school reopening on June 2, because we couldn’t wait for the budget approved by the township education officer’s office. However, it is still raining in some classrooms.”

There are over 350 students at Kyeinchaung BEHS.

Approval from the Education Ministry must be sought at least one year in advance for the construction of new school buildings, an official from the Arakan State Education Office told DMG, adding that budgets for the renovation and repair of damaged school facilities will be allocated later this year.

“We will construct a two-storey building at an affiliated high school in Shwekyan village this year. The current needs, such as school renovations, are being phased in from now on,” said the deputy director of the Arakan State Education Office, Dr. Tun Tun Thein.

The significant shortcomings in terms of Arakan State’s educational infrastructure are coupled with teacher shortages at many basic education schools in the state.

A female teacher was injured and required medical treatment on June 7 when the ceiling of the staffroom collapsed at a basic education high school in the village of Temauk, Taungup Township.