Education reform group opposes merging small schools

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Education reform group opposes merging small schools

By The Nation

 

A file photo of students at a small school in Si Sa Ket province attend a lesson conducted via distance-learning TV.

 

THE INDEPENDENT Committee for Education Reform (ICER) disagrees with the World Bank’s suggestion that Thailand merge its small schools to boost the quality of education.

 

“We believe small schools have their benefits. For example, it’s where teachers know each student in person, so they can provide attention to each student based on their aptitude,” ICER chairman Dr Charas Suwanwela said yesterday. 

 

In a recent report, the World Bank suggested that Thailand merge its small schools to boost efficiency in human resources and budget usage, as well as the quality of education. 

 

According to the World Bank report, merging small schools will bring the number of schools nationwide from 35,506 to 17,766 following the proposed merger, and the number of classrooms would come down from 344,009 to 259,561.

 

This model has been touted as a way to increase educational quality and solve the shortage of teachers on a sustainable basis. At present, some small schools have just one teacher, who handles students in different educational level. 

 

Charas has argued that the focus should be on how best to improve small schools. In his view, small schools suffer due to limited financial resources.

 

The government has been allocating funds to schools based mainly on a per-head basis. This means if the number of students is low, the financial support allocated is also low. 

 

“But we should be able to solve these problems by seeking support from communities, business sector and the civil sector,” he said, adding that many schools have enjoyed success by partnering with different sectors. 

 

Moreover, Charas said, it was now possible to use digital technology in teaching students at small schools. 

 

ICER has come up with a plan to develop 25 per cent of the schools in remote areas or on islands and 10 per cent of schools in developed areas as models for small-school development under the educational-innovation law.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30368770

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2019-05-03

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[toenail]

(My opinion relates to the rural areas of Thailand, not the big city school systems.) Local small elementary schools do not need to merge. Parent involvement is important in their local schools and small class sizes help...but to provide a student the best education in high school a bigger facility can offer more than a village school. Unfortunately this means the students have to have transportation to get to their school of higher academics which could be over an hours drive. Unlike Western countries, there wouldn’t be school buses available and to ride a public bus from the nearest highway would be unreliable schedule-wise. This is a real challenge but with a large number of 14-15 year olds in rural area not continuing their higher education this is a serious problem in the rural areas.

I can remember farm communities in my country not wanting to merge in order to build a modern middle school- high school which would offer better quality education and offer more classes for their children. The reason? The small little schools were sport rivals and the parents did not want to give this sports identity up... forget the academics. 

[billd766]

I live in rural Khampaeng Phet about 65 km from the city.

 

We used to send him to a big school in the city. It meant that I woke him up about 05:30 to get himself ready to leave on the 06:00 bus (private company) for him to get to school by 07:30. They would leave about 4 pm and get home around 6pm. Travelling time was around 3 1/2 to 4 hours daily.

 

2 years ago he went to the amphur village school just 15 km away and leaves about 6. 45 am for a 7.30 start. He leaves around 4 pm and is usually home by 4.30 pm unless he stays on to play pickup basketball in which case I generally pick him up around 6.15 for a 10 minute drive home.

[mok199]

The important thing is attention and''we are now having this dialogue'' every little bit helps our kids....

[khunPer]

They tried that – merging small school, or rather closing most of them – in my home country decades ago. Now they seem to find out that it was not that good an idea after all, to pack 30 to 35 students in one classroom with one teacher.

 

In my opinion, and from Thai experience, for pre-school and primary classes (P1 to P6, or Y1 to Y7 international) its a benefit with few students well known by the teachers. For higher levels (from M1, or from Y8) the quality of the tuition is important, and school-merge makes sense.