Primary and Secondary Education in Myanmar 177
recipient countries implement it as a condition to receiving aid. Stated
and unstated goals of decentralization include economic development,
increased management efficiency, increasing democratization and generally
improving the quality of education. In some sectors, it has the potential
to reduce ethnic conflict.^28
Decentralization in education usually includes policy development,
the creation or revision of curricula and student evaluation, rationalizing
the allocation of funds and budgeting, generating revenue, and the
management of resources.
Organizations such as the World Bank, who are active in Myanmar, have
given recommendations on reform, of which decentralization is a central
feature. In 2006 the World Bank released a study which set “improved
learning outcomes” as the central objective of education reform. The study
suggested that improving the management of education is crucial to this
goal.^29 Administrators must have better abilities to make decisions and
evaluate their system analytically. Other areas that governments must
address include language policy (which in Myanmar is the question of
mother tongue education), pedagogy, parent involvement, curriculum and
curriculum reform, and education philosophy. This latter is an articulation
of the kind of student, citizen, or person that the education system aims
to create.
There is some debate about the purpose of decentralization, and
the best outcomes of it. Policy advisors tend to see decentralization as
a way to make administration and governance more responsive to the
population, more effective, and more accountable. Advisors also see it
as a way to save money. There have been cases where decentralization
has been an excuse to under- or de-fund the education sector, with the
central government “encouraging” lower levels of administration to find
funds on their own. In Pakistan, for example, the government simply
closed the national Ministry of Education. Each province was given
responsibility for education.
On the other hand, not all forms of centralization are necessarily bad
or connote inefficiency. In Anglo-American countries, such as the United
States, which has allowed a high degree of local autonomy in education,
there have been moves towards greater centralization and standardization.
In Thailand, a centralized education system has been successful in
increasing enrolment and retention rates, although centralization does not
necessarily improve quality, especially in rural areas.^30