Bob Carr (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

This goes to the core of the development challenge the country faces after being retarded by dictatorship for all the decades since the military coup of 1962. Children in Myanmar face the prospect that they will have a lower level of education than their parents. Successive generations have been affected by low government investment in education and a shortage of teachers. Aung San Suu Kyi spoke to me about how education now is inferior to the education she received in the 1950s. In 2010, around one million children were not attending school, and only 54 per cent of children completed primary school, as I said a moment ago.

The Myanmar government is completing a comprehensive education review. We are co-chairing with UNICEF the working group which is overseeing the review. The review will help to better target investment in education. We have allocated $80 million over four years to help with this target. (Time expired)