Over 265,000 students registered for the matriculation exam in Myanmar

A source close to the regime’s education department in Yangon told DVB that stricter regulations have been introduced for the 2025–26 academic year’s nationwide matriculation exams, which began on Wednesday and ends on March 17.

The examinations determine whether students can graduate from high school and enter university in Myanmar.

A source told DVB that students who bring mobile phones or other electronic devices into the exam room will be sent home and barred from retaking the exam for one year.

Those caught cheating during the exam face a two-year ban. Damaging answer sheets, verbally abusing exam proctors, or writing obscene content on answer papers, could result in a three-year ban, the source added.

The regime’s Ministry of Education claimed that over 265,000 students are registered for the 2025-26 matriculation exams at 890 examination centers – an increase from over 120,000 in the 2024-25 academic year.

A total of 49,227 students are scheduled to sit for the exams at 111 examination centers in Yangon Region, according to the regime’s education department.

Prior to the 2021 coup, over 910,000 students sat for the exams in the 2019–2020 academic year, according to regime data.

The decline in student participation in the four years since the coup was attributed to conflict that erupted nationwide in 2021 with many students’ families being displaced from their homes in Myanmar as a result.

The U.N. estimates that over 3.7 million people in Myanmar have been displaced from their homes due to conflict and are living as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Nearly seven million children in Myanmar—about 53 percent of the school-age population—have been out of school since 2021, according to the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP-Myanmar) in a report released in August.

In the last five years, an estimated 125,000-150,000 teachers have joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), which is a nonviolent resistance to military rule in Myanmar led by civil servants after the 2021 coup.

Shuttle buses and private vehicles transporting students to examination centers are exempt from the fuel rationing measures enforced by the regime since March 7.

These measures mandate that vehicles will only be allowed to operate on alternating days with license plates ending in odd numbers allowed to operate on odd-numbered days, while those ending in even numbers allowed to operate on even-numbered days.