Conclusion: "The picture of civil-society initiatives in the Burmese/Myanmar education sector is diverse and multifaceted. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some general trends: first, there are quite a lot of community-based initiatives in the education sector in the broadest sense. Most of these community-based groups, however, cannot engage in education directly. Instead, they are confined to education support activities such as the construction of school buildings or the collection of donations to pay for village teachers? salaries. Second, there is a number—but definitely a small number—of civil-society groups that can engage in education more directly. Most of these apply informal, community-based approaches to teaching, whereas so far only a few groups have managed to become involved in formal education and been allowed to teach the government curriculum. Among the groups that are able to engage in formal education, monastic schools are undoubtedly the most prominent. Third, most educational initiatives that are aimed at children take place at the primary or even at the pre-primary level. While there are some at the middle-school level, only a handful exists at the high-school level. There are, however, also several educational initiatives for 169 The (re)-emergence of civil society in areas of state weakness: the case of education in Burma/Myanmar (young) adults in the sectors of vocational skills training and capacity building. Fourth, civil-society organisations active in the education sector often serve multiple social functions and, apart from education, many of them provide other welfare services as well. Education is often broadly understood to include (preventive) health education and general capacity building. Fifth, even though the number of civil-society initiatives in the education sector has been increasing during the past few years, the government is still extremely suspicious of all educational activities conducted by non-state actors. As a consequence, private education has not so far been legally provided for, and the majority of the civil-society groups that are active in the education sector cannot register with the MOE. As a makeshift solution, some of them have chosen to register with the MSW or the MRA. This leads us to the last but perhaps the most important point: most civil society-based educational initiatives take place under religious or ethnic umbrellas, such as Buddhist monasteries, Christian churches and ethnic CLCs. This last point has broader implications: in present-day Burma/Myanmar, various secular, religious and ethnic (cultural) education systems—all of which promote different life models—coexist. In some cases, the boundaries between these various education and life models seem to be quite clear-cut. Some Buddhist monastic schools teach only the Dhamma,30 some Christian missionaries preach only the Gospels and some CLCs focus solely on the preservation of their ethnic cultural heritage; and, above all, there is a highly authoritarian state, which is still largely reluctant to accept the existence of an independent civil society and the alternative education systems it provides. There are, however, also cases where the boundaries between religious and ethnic (cultural) education on the one hand, and secular/non-cultural education on the other, are rather blurred. Traditional religious and ethnic cultural groups that predate the modern national education system have re-emerged and increasingly engage in secular, non-cultural and, in some rare cases, even formal education as well. New actors such as NGOs have also entered the scene. The rigidity of the regime?s educational policies certainly does not reflect the reality on the ground. Instead of providing an enabling legal framework for private education, however, the regime still seeks mostly to either suppress or coopt alternative civil society-based education systems. Cooption of formerly independent groups thus constitutes another, negative form of the blurring of the lines between civil society-based and state-run education..."