Innovation in Refugee Education on the Thai-Myanmar Border

Students in the General Educational Development (GED) program at Minmahaw Higher Education Program, Mae Sot, Northern Thailand, learning about the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway, June 2025.

Kicking off Refugee Week 2025 with some reflections on a transformative week in Thailand meeting with refugee students and school.

Written by Steph Cousins

Some experiences fundamentally shift your perspective on the world. Last week's journey from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Mae Sot and Mae La Refugee Camp brought into sharp focus both the immense challenges facing refugee communities and the extraordinary resilience of those who refuse to let circumstances define their futures.

Last week I visited Thailand with colleagues Sally Baker, Michelle Manks and Laura Cochrane to meet with refugee students and schools and develop partnerships and connections that will be critical to growing the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway (RSSP).

Context for refugees in Thailand

Thailand hosts approximately 90,000 UNHCR registered refugees and asylum seekers, as well as at least 52,000 displaced people who have arrived from Myanmar since the coup in 2021. Most refugees are located in the nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, with several thousands located in urban areas, mainly Bangkok. According to UNHCR, the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar is one of the ‘most complex and protracted in the world, marked by recurring waves of displacement and few prospects for durable solutions’.

Education for all?

Thailand has an "education for all" policy that is meant to enable all students to attend Thai school, regardless of legal status. Yet there is a massive gap between policy and practice. Schools routinely request residency and ID documentation that refugees do not possess.

Language barriers are also a huge issue, with students only able to attend school if they can fluently speak Thai. We learned how until very recently refugees were not allowed to be taught Thai in the camps due to a national security policy that has now been revoked thanks to advocacy from the UNHCR.

Refugee children also face a challenging catch-22: they must start school in Grade 1. If a 13-year-old arrives in Thailand, they would need to start in a Grade 1 class, but understandably many schools do not allow this given the age disparity.

Necessity, the mother of innovation

What struck me most profoundly was the scale and sophistication of educational innovation happening across Thailand to address these barriers. Unable to graduate with a Thai high school certification, most refugees with dreams of higher education turn to the General Educational Development (GED) Test - the US high school equivalency diploma. Organisations have sprung up around the country to support students in taking the test. (It was quite a surreal sight to see maps of the 50 US states and posters about the US constitution on the walls of some of these schools - to pass the GED refugees must learn way more about US culture, history, politics than one would think is necessary or useful.)

Organisations like Child's Dream Foundation have secured private funding to operate with an annual budget of $12 million across four countries, supporting thousands of young people annually while offering 45 scholarships to displaced students in Thailand to complete their GED each year. Their approach, leveraging networks from their founders' former careers in Swiss banking, demonstrates how private philanthropy can create sustainable impact when strategically deployed.

BEAM Education Foundation has been pioneering GED preparation since 2010, adapting through COVID to deliver exclusively online programs. This enables the participation of students who face travel barriers and those who need to work while studying to support their family (about 80% of their students). Their "GED+" initiative, developed in partnership with Chiang Mai University, represents a fascinating evolution, adapting the traditional US-centric GED curriculum to provide students with more relevant content from the Asia region, and integrating regional social studies and digital literacy while using learning hubs to prevent cheating in testing. With 100 students across two pilot programs and 30 graduates from their first cohort, they're proving that innovative delivery models can overcome traditional barriers.

Migrant Learning Centres in Mae Sot

Mae Sot, a town just 1km from the border of Myanmar, revealed the extraordinary dedication of educators working within impossible constraints. There are 63 migrant learning centres in this part of the world, mainly established and run by refugees and migrants themselves. At schools like Minmahaw School, New Blood Centre High School, Children's Development Centre, and Hse Thoo Lei Karen National Learning Centre, teachers navigate funding shortages, documentation requirements, distance barriers, and constantly shifting legal frameworks to provide education opportunities.

New Blood Learning Centre has hundreds of GED students as well as programs to teach students English, Finnish and Japanese, in preparation for higher education and labour mobility. We also met talented GED students at Minmahaw Higher Education Program, which takes 100 displaced students through intensive digital literacy, English immersion and GED preparation each year. The intensive, onsite learning environment, funded through scholarships, supports students to focus on their studies with a remarkable 100% pass rate. At Has Thoo Lei High School, we met bright students learning IT and studying maths in preparation for GED testing, programs made possible because of a powerhouse migrant founder, private philanthropy and corporate donors like Australian company Cotton On.

The Children's Development Centre (CDC) runs a GED program, but highlighted that students must gain exposure to multiple curriculums and languages in their learning journey with the school:

“We cannot have one curriculum. We don’t know whether our students are going back [to Myanmar], staying here or going to resettle elsewhere. We try to grab all the curriculum that will be applicable to our children.”

Usually that means Burmese curriculum at primary level, Thai language tuition to support local integration, English to support students pursuing pathways abroad and the GED for students pursuing post-secondary education. The adaptability of the schools and students to operate in this way is beyond impressive.

These programs are supported by a range of organisations and competitive scholarship programs funding refugee students to complete the GED, such as Prospect Burma and Child's Dream Foundation.

These schools and scholarship organisations are doing more than teaching. They are holding open the door to opportunity for students who would otherwise be locked out. Without their innovative work, it would not be possible for refugees in Thailand to access programs like the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway. Their efforts are the quiet engine behind the future students this pathway will serve.

Expanding pathways globally

Elma, student selected for the postgraduate stream of the first RSSP cohort, attending the Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways at Payap University, Chiang Mai, together here with Steph (L) and Sally (R).

Our Thailand visit was on the sidelines of a broader Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways meeting in Chiang Mai that brought together 80 participants from 12 countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and the US. The scale of international collaboration was remarkable, with delegates gathering at Payap University to discuss how we can make higher education more accessible to Burmese refugees across the region.

A highlight of the conference was having Elma in attendance, one of the first 20 students bound for Australia later this year as part of the inaugural intake of the RSSP. Elma will be pursuing a Masters of International Business.

As our colleague Aki Takada from Japan ICU Foundation reflected, the devastating impact of US policy changes on refugee initiatives worldwide has made it particularly meaningful for like-minded organisations to come together, brainstorm, and search for ways forward. The need to renew our sense of camaraderie and solidarity, to recharge and work even harder towards our common goal, has never been more urgent. Colleagues from Japan and Canada in particular were exploring establishing new education pathways from Thailand, which alongside the RSSP would bring a great deal of hope in a challenging time.

This global perspective reinforces that the RSSP isn't operating in isolation. We're part of an international movement recognising that refugee students represent not just humanitarian need, but extraordinary untapped potential that can enrich our communities and contribute to solving the world's most pressing challenges. Kudos to Payap University for providing a space for these critical conversations reflects how educational institutions can serve as catalysts for broader change.

Gratitude to the dream team

I want to express my deep gratitude to the three remarkable women who made this trip not just possible, but profoundly meaningful: Sally Baker, Michelle Manks, and Laura Cochrane.

L-R: Steph Cousins, Michelle Manks, Sally Baker and Laura Cochrane. Payap University, June 2025.

Sally Baker is the Chair of Refugee Education Australia and co-lead of the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway. Sally founded the Australian Refugee Welcome University Sponsorship Consortium (ARWUSC), a group of 20 Australian universities driving the RSSP forward. Without Sally the RSSP would never have come to light, and I’m delighted to be co-leading the program with her. Michelle Manks is the former head of World University Service of Canada (WUSC-EUMC) Refugee Student Program, the Canadian program the RSSP was inspired by. I met Michelle back in 2018 as part of a Churchill Fellowship researching community refugee sponsorship models. This meeting lit a spark, and seven years later I’m so grateful we have Michelle advising us as a consultant on the RSSP, sharing her extensive experience in building successful refugee student pathways. Laura Cochrane, a social impact leader with decades of experience in philanthropy and journalism, jumped at the chance to join us in Thailand, having recently taken on a volunteer role as Engagement Adviser at Skill Path. We are so lucky to have Laura’s strategic insights to support the growth of the RSSP.

As we continue building the RSSP and working with colleagues across the Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways, I'm reminded that education isn't just a pathway to opportunity, it's a pathway to hope. And hope changes everything.