Systematic Barriers and Uncertainties of the Future of Migrant Education in Thailand
This Labour Day, 1May 2026, we recognize the hands that power economies. In places like Ranong, Thailand, migrant workers from Myanmar have spent decades working in harbors and factories—building lives through hard labor. But behind this workforce is a quieter reality: their children are still fighting for access to education.
Most of the Burmese migrant workers in Ranong, Thailand, have been living in Ranong for more than decades, but their children are still facing the same uncertain futures. The harbors and factories offer jobs, but education is the key element to break the poverty cycle of migrant families. Thus, Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs) have emerged to fill gaps left by Thai schools, but challenges remain, including documentation barriers, language gaps, and MLC closures. Parents want their children to have a better future so they don’t have to work the same kind of work they do now. However, the systemic barriers make this difficult, and expanding access to education is critical to ensuring that migrant children can thrive.
The border between Thailand and Myanmar is the longest migration route in Southeast Asia, with a distance of over 2,400 kilometers. It is one of the twenty largest migration routes in the world. From January through December 2024, 1.3 million Myanmar citizens crossed the border (IOM, 2025). The number of Burmese migrant workers has increased since 2021 due to the domestic political instability in Myanmar. Many people were forced to leave the country for the border countries, like Thailand, including a large number of school-age children, and most of them moved to Ranong after the political crisis in Myanmar in 2021. Many people moved to border cities like Ranong and Maesot or to other cities. Our fieldwork was conducted in Ranong, one of the main destinations for people from the Tanintharyi region, as many from that region have already lived there for a long time. Among them, there were many children who lived and studied in Myanmar before. When they arrived in Ranong, most of them could not continue their education with the non-formal education pathway or the migrant education pathway because of the age limitation and language barriers.
Besides, the way the migrant family thinks of the education for their children has totally changed. Prior to the political crisis, the parents' goal was to send their children back to Myanmar to attend school, and they would send money back to support the children. But now, most of the migrant parents want their children to study in Thailand and stay with them in Thailand. Moreover, most of the migrant parents prefer their children to study at the Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs) because they want their children to learn their native language, though some also choose to send their children to Thai public schools. However, the future of migrant children and their education pathways is uncertain, and the parents are still struggling to decide whether they should send their children back to Myanmar or let them stay with them in Thailand.
As a result, most of the migrants' parents choose the second option and try to find a possible solution that is best for the education of their children. According to our field trip interviews, many participants mentioned that the domestic political situation back in Myanmar is a major issue, and they do not want their children to go back to study there. At the same time, there are challenges to accessing Thai public schools. Even though Thailand has the Education for All (EFA) policy, which allows non-Thai children to study in Thai public schools for free, from preschool through the end of high school (Bangkok Post, 2023), many still face challenges such as documentation requirements and language difficulties. Most of the fish workers we interviewed mentioned that they had tried enrolling their children in the Thai public school, but the process required different documents such as a birth certificate or a 10-year ID card, which they don’t have. Moreover, even if they sent the children to a Thai public school, they still need to pay for the hidden costs such as uniforms, transportation, or other essential fees, and children face significant language barriers as well as discriminations. For instance, children find it difficult to adapt to the Thai language as the language of instruction, which negatively affects their learning and results in high dropout rates. Moreover, they often experience implicit discrimination at school because teachers and friends may treat them differently, which would discourage attendance and lead to feelings of exclusion (Tuangratananon et al., 2019).
Thus, we can clearly see the different obstacles to accessing migrant children in Thai public schools. Although the EFA policy appears promising on paper, its implementation remains incomplete and faces invisible and visible difficulties. Furthermore, when we discuss migrant education, Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs) play an essential role, which emerged as a grassroots response to exclusion from Thai schools. Besides, MLCs are the priority choice for both migrant parents and children. As we discuss with parents, all of them want their children to study at MLCs because MLCs provide three languages, including Burmese, Thai, and English. On the one hand, there is no doubt that MLCs are essential for the future of migrant children in Thailand, and they play an important role in improving the migrant community. On the other hand, MLCs themselves are facing different challenges, such as policy constraints, because most of the MLCs operate in a legal grey area without formal recognition due to difficulties in obtaining a license.
In addition, the documentation problems of MLCs’ teachers or volunteers and the use of the Burmese language or curricula in MLCs limited the ability to operate smoothly and effectively. Moreover, there are challenges like age restrictions because some of the MLCs only accept children up to 15 years old because they have a joint partnership program with Thailand’s Non-Formal Education (NFE) system. For instance, students from MLCs must be 15 years old or younger to enroll in Thailand’s NFE system through MLCs, particularly in Ranong province. It completely impacts the migrants' children who arrived after 2021 from Myanmar in Ranong province because a huge number of them are older than 15 years old; they have no proper documents and lack Thai language skills. Also, the recent closure of migrant learning centers in the south of Thailand has raised alarm that about 400,000 children from migrant families may lose access to school and run the risk of being exploited while their parents are at workplaces (Thai PBS, 2025).
In short, the story of Burmese migrants in Ranong is not about coming to Thailand to work but to cross the boundaries for their children's future. Although harbors and factories can offer jobs and incomes, they cannot provide the opportunities that only education can provide for their children. Due to the uncertainties in Myanmar, now most parents want their children to remain in Thailand. However, they still cannot overcome the systematic barriers that stand in the way, such as documentation, language barriers, discrimination, and the precarious nature of MLCs. Moreover, the MLC closures and the lack of substance in the Education for All policy point to a troubling problem: thousands of children are at risk of missing out on education, which could see them exploited rather than empowered. To conclude, migrant education in Thailand is vulnerable and needs more support and attention than it has received before. What becomes evident is that education is the critical intervention to break the poverty cycle and transform migrant communities. Therefore, the future of migrant children in Thailand mainly relies on expanding recognition of MLCs, addressing documentation barriers, and increasing support from both the Thai and Myanmar governments and all stakeholders, as well as international communities who are working for the migrant community in Thailand.
This article represents a broader reflection that differs from the insights collected from our field interviews and is a part of the bachelor-level thesis by Soe Myat Tun (James), justseafood reserach assistant.