Half of all school children want to go back to school!

[webfact]

Picture: Siam Rath

 

Siam Rath quoted the secretary of the Office of Basic Education Commission (OBEC) as saying that half of all children want to go back to school.

 

Amporn Pinasa said after a meeting with educationalists that he had done a survey. 

 

Of course this meant that 50% of children don't want to go back!

 

Most schools will be delaying the start of term until June 1st due to the third wave of the pandemic. 

 

Amporn said that teachers will be focusing on safety and allaying parental fears ahead of the June 1st opening. 

 

Between 17th and 31st May when most children at Thai schools were due back there will be online learning to choose from. 

 

The Education Service Office will be handling those children who missed entrance exams and have no places yet. 

 

Teachers will be using the online learning experiences of last year to arrange matters between now and May 16th under the following headings:

 

On-site, on-air, online, on-hand and on-demand. 

 

Siam Rath made no attempt to explain what any of these actually mean. 

 

A Thaivisa reporter who translated this report conducted his own mini-survey on his own two children. 

 

The deafening response was "No we don't want to go back to school!"

 

Old habits die hard....

 

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[johng]

If you click on the link to Siam Rath in the above article

The requested page "/n/242135v" could not be found.

[johng]

9 minutes ago, webfact said:

Teachers will be using the online learning experiences of last year to arrange matters between now and May 16th under the following headings:

 

On-site, on-air, online, on-hand and on-demand. 

 

Shame they removed the DLTV  learning stations from Terrestrial TV    now only available online or by Satellite

strangely they still show up in the Terrestrial TV box channel listings have video and audio PID's  but tuning to them displays a black screen.

[RotBenz8888]

13 minutes ago, webfact said:

On-site, on-air, online, on-hand and on-demand. 

 

I don't think the masterminds themselves understand that mumbo-jumbo. 

[rumak]

Finally getting tired of being on Facebook  24/7   ?

 

 

[lupin]

21 minutes ago, webfact said:

half of all children want to go back to school.

and I'm sure a fair number of children want to smother themselves in peanut butter, eat chocolate for breakfast and draw on the walls in crayon.... doesn't mean we let them dictate policy does it.

[Greenside]

  

 

[edwinchester]

I guess that means half of them don't want to go back to school.

[86Tiger]

13 minutes ago, edwinchester said:

I guess that means half of them don't want to go back to school.

 

 

I would have to prognosticate that is probably a normal number virus or no.........

[Misterwhisper]

1 hour ago, edwinchester said:

I guess that means half of them don't want to go back to school.

And another 0% are undecided.

[RichardColeman]

All the schools would be open tomorrow if they were told they had to pay money back for children not attending !

[Andycoops]

Not surprising as they hate being told by grandma to take the buffalo etc out to the fields at 5.30am and then back again.

[rasmus5150]

Sorry to hear that only 50% want to go back.

 

That actually shows that Thailand still has an old-style approach to basic education, that does not motivate the kids. Just piling on homework after homework and exam after exam, does not make the kids more intelligent.

 

In Europe (where they are opening up) most kids are delighted to go back to meet their friends, and parents are relieved that they don't have to function as teachers anymore.

 

Truly wish Thailand would update their education system, just take a look at Finland or any Scandinavian country. But nothing has happened in the last 25 years....... Sigh......

[BangkokReady]

35 minutes ago, rasmus5150 said:

That actually shows that Thailand still has an old-style approach to basic education, that does not motivate the kids. Just piling on homework after homework and exam after exam, does not make the kids more intelligent.

 

Work load aside, simply the fact that they have to get up at 5am and be at school from about 7am is enough to put anyone off attending.

 

35 minutes ago, rasmus5150 said:

Truly wish Thailand would update their education system, just take a look at Finland or any Scandinavian country. But nothing has happened in the last 25 years....... Sigh......

 

That would be great, but how could they?  Step one would be addressing the class sizes of 40-50 students.  I believe the Finnish class sizes are around 20, so that would mean instantly doubling the amount of classes at any school.  Although not everything would need to be doubled, presumably the number of classrooms and teachers would be at least.  That's before you consider the curriculum redesign and pretty major retraining of teachers that would need to take place.

 

It wouldn't be cheap and most of that cost would probably be passed onto the parents.

[dinsdale]

Very sad. After the 1st so called wave I asked my students who was happy to be back at school. 50% was not close. A lot less. Kids are kids. We would not be talking about this if the whatever would be would be idiot was not in charge.

[KhunBENQ]

3 hours ago, Andycoops said:

Not surprising as they hate being told by grandma to take the buffalo etc out to the fields at 5.30am and then back again.

Somehow this describes the situation up here in a rural village.

It's so stupid to close schools nationwide indiscriminately.

Cynics could say it doesn't matter as the performance of such public schools is just terrible.

But please give them at least a chance to learn some basics.

 

Another aspect that I was told (could be true or not?): for private schools parents have to pay full fees whether or not the school is open/does anything.

 

[AndyFoxy]

50% don't  then?

[JCauto]

I was about to say "WHAT!!?!?!? A survey that didn't get 90% response according to whatever the government wanted at the time? Surely couldn't be done by NIDA in that case. Sure enough...

[mtls2005]

The other half want to leave Thailand and get a real education.

[marin]

19 hours ago, rasmus5150 said:

But nothing has happened in the last 25 years....... Sigh......

50 at least is the sad truth. The same texts, the same teacher training, and the same rote, no critical thinking allowed approach. 

[Golden Triangle]

I'm not a parent of Thai kids thankfully, so as an outsider of the education system looking in I'm not so sure that I would want my kids going back into school just now, I wouldn't feel confident that the system can guarantee their safety, there are too many cases popping up all over the place for comfort.

 

Just my view from the outside looking in.

[rasmus5150]

On 5/8/2021 at 3:14 PM, KhunBENQ said:

Another aspect that I was told (could be true or not?): for private schools parents have to pay full fees whether or not the school is open/does anything.

Absolutely true. I'm paying full fee.

 

School is saving lot's of cash. Because now they have only 1 teacher, teaching 3 classes online at the same time.

[richard_smith237]

44 minutes ago, rasmus5150 said:

On 5/8/2021 at 8:14 PM, KhunBENQ said:

Another aspect that I was told (could be true or not?): for private schools parents have to pay full fees whether or not the school is open/does anything.

Absolutely true. I'm paying full fee.

 

School is saving lot's of cash. Because now they have only 1 teacher, teaching 3 classes online at the same time.

 

Each school is different I imagine. 

 

My Son’s Summer term (T3) was closed in 2020 with just online learning.... we received a 50,000 baht discount on the following terms fee’s (T1 2020).

 

I’m not sure if we will receive a discount for T1 next school year (from, Sept), I guess it depends on how much of T3 is closed. All teachers are still working. 

 

My Son’s school has been excellent with online lessons, kids have been supported very closely and guided extremely well by all teachers (*except his Thai class which has been highly disorganised and an embarrassingly farce). 

 

Teachers seem to be working extra hard, I think the teachers are having to do a lot more work than they would otherwise do with the children in school - They’re emailing information out to parents in the evening, marking work, sending individual video feed back from the work. It seems quite intensive. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Artisi]

On 5/8/2021 at 2:12 PM, edwinchester said:

I guess that means half of them don't want to go back to school.

Maybe the majority of the half, the balance never go to school anyway. 

[Artisi]

5 hours ago, rasmus5150 said:

Absolutely true. I'm paying full fee.

 

School is saving lot's of cash. Because now they have only 1 teacher, teaching 3 classes online at the same time.

At the rates of pay for teachers, can't see them saving lots of cash plus the majority of teachers are still being paid.