Myanmar : Support for Enhancing Education and Skills Base in Myanmar

Education / Education sector development - Secondary - Technical and vocational education and training

Since 2012, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has engaged with the Government of Myanmar to help formulate and implement education reforms, particularly in secondary education and technical and vocational education and training (TVET). The Equipping Youth for Employment Project (EYE) the first ADB loan for Myanmar's education sector aims to strengthen the country's education and skills base and promote inclusive growth and job creation. It supports reforms to realign secondary education and TVET to Myanmar's evolving workforce needs. These reforms are vital to equip youth with skills for employment in a modern economy and meet employer skill demands. The project's impact will be education and skills base for inclusive growth enhanced, and its outcome will be secondary education subsector and TVET realigned to evolving labor force needs and equitably expanded. It has three outputs: (i) policy frameworks and capacities for cohesive, workforce-responsive secondary education subsector and TVET enhanced; (ii) new secondary education subsector curriculum delivered and access expanded; and (iii) new TVET programs introduced and access expanded. The project's total cost is $105.0 million, with $98.5 million financed by a loan from ADB.

ADB and the European Union (EU) have been closely collaborating with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and other development partners to design and implement education reforms, focusing strategically on secondary education and TVET. In 2019, the EU and the Government of Myanmar signed the financing agreement for an education sector reform contract with grant financing of up to 221 million, including budget support of 175 million for secondary education and TVET reforms and complementary measures. The proposed transaction technical assistance (TA) will support a subset of the complementary measures. Complementing ongoing ADB (EYE) and EU support, the EU will finance the TA in the amount of 24 million ($26.0 million equivalent) and ADB will administer it. The TA will support continued reforms to better align secondary education and TVET to Myanmar's evolving skill demands. It aligns with ADB's Strategy 2030 and will help address remaining poverty and reducing inequalities by improving education and training (operational priority 1) and accelerate progress in gender equality (operational priority 2).

Weak human capital poses a critical obstacle to Myanmar's development, threatening to trap the economy in a low value-added model based on cheap, unskilled labor and natural resource exploitation, while obstructing national poverty reduction and inclusive growth goals. Many young entrants to the workforce lack skills needed for employment in a modern economy. Employers consistently cite weak human capital as a leading constraint on business. Secondary education and TVET are central to this human capital challenge. Secondary education supplies the largest share (50%) of entrants into nonagricultural formal wage labor. However, outdated, rote-based teaching and learning approaches mean that school-leavers lack foundation skills (e.g., literacy and numeracy) and soft skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and communication skills). Likewise, TVET has struggled to equip youth with vocation-specific hard skills (e.g., construction or mechanical skills) and with entrepreneurship and other business-related skills. To address these challenges, the MOE initiated reforms under the National Education Strategic Plan, 2016 2021 to realign secondary education and TVET to meet evolving labor market skill needs. However, reversing decades of underinvestment will require sustained support. ADB and the EU are committed to supporting sequenced reforms of the current National Education Strategic Plan and subsequent national plans.

Building on key initial reforms supported by EYE and complementing EU budget support, the proposed TA will support the MOE in advancing critical follow-on reforms. First, it will strengthen MOE capacity to formulate and implement cohesive and evidence-based reforms to align skill supply with evolving skill demand. Second, as part of a multipronged approach to improve teaching and learning, the TA will support the MOE to formulate and introduce (i) a continuing professional development (CPD) system for in-service secondary education teachers and (ii) updated pre-service education programs to prepare future high school teachers to deliver the new curriculum. This will complement the MOE's overhaul of the secondary education curriculum (including textbooks and teacher guides) and annual rounds of in-service training of teachers to deliver the improved curriculum, supported under EYE. Third, the TA will complement EYE support of competency-based modular short courses at selected public TVET schools to equip disadvantaged youth and unskilled workers with basic skills. Specifically, the TA will provide follow-on support to the MOE to (i) reform curricula of longer-term TVET programs at upper secondary and post-secondary levels; and (ii) strengthen MOE cooperation with nongovernment organizations and industries to diversify TVET provision, including targeting females and ethnic group youth. The TA directly complements the ongoing EYE and may feed into downstream ADB loan support.