Kachin

Validating Kachinland’s Independent Colleges- Between market and ethnic communities 

Education has long been an area of friction between the state and the Kachin people. Schools have become a site for ‘Burmanization’, the cultural imposition of the dominant Bamar ethnic group onto the country’s minorities in terms of language, cultures and historical narratives. In common with other ethnic minority organisations with high degrees of autonomy, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) has been running its own secondary schools outside of state control.