With the school year slated to begin June 1, Unicef said there is no time to rebuild the estimated 2,700 severely damaged primary schools used by 350,000 students or to replace the unknown numbers of teachers killed or missing following Cyclone Nargis. -- PHOTO: AFP

With the school year slated to begin June 1, Unicef said there is no time to rebuild the estimated 2,700 severely damaged primary schools used by 350,000 students or to replace the unknown numbers of teachers killed or missing following Cyclone Nargis, which left more than 66,000 people dead or missing.

Instead, the focus is on training volunteer teachers, providing as many as 300,000 school kits for affected students and setting up schools in temporary locations as soon as possible using tarps, tents and even bamboo.

'Children have been through a terrible tragedy and trauma,' said Mr Cliff Meyers, Unicef's regional education adviser on Wednesday.

'Research shows that getting back into a normal pattern represented by attending schools really helps them adjust to the tragedy and overcome the horrors they have been through.'

The UN is hoping to reach the likes Tin Soe, who this week was begging on the streets of Yangon with his grandmother. The family lost their home in the disaster.

'We are here to help mother make some money so we can eat,' the child, Tin Soe, said softly. 'We are hungry.'

Asked if he thinks his school will be rebuilt before the school year begins, he scratched his head and said: 'I don't know. I hope so. I miss my friends and my teachers.'

Richard Bridle, another Unicef official in Bangkok, said there were other reasons it was good for children to go back to school: 'It gives parents breathing space to think about things other than the immediate survival of their families.'

Mr Guy Cave, deputy country director in Myanmar for the private aid group Save the Children, also supports the goal of setting up temporary schools as soon as possible.

But he said that doing so by June 1 would be difficult, given that many areas still have 'not been reached with food and water, let alone school equipment.'

'In many of these places, it will take longer than that to get up and running. It will be an enormous logistics challenge,' Mr Cave said. 'But it's a vital thing to try and do. The sooner that kids are back in school, the sooner they can return to a sense of normality and routine.'

But in its rush to restart schooling in just two weeks, in reconstructed facilities or temporary shelters, the authorities could be missing an opportunity to build stronger and safer schools, suggested Mr Cave and several other experts. -- AP