Thailand's Global Education Ranking Sparks Controversy and Scrutiny

[Purdey]

Hardly worth discussing Thai education if Westerners use loose instead of lose, their instead of they're in the forum.

 

[Reddavy]

Who needs an education to work in bars on soi 6 🤷🏼😂😂

[Tom100]

Thailand standardized test scores vs. OECD averge since 2000. The gold line is the OECD average.

This test is only taken by students that stay in school until age 15, and the dropout rate is high, so the actual average abilities are lower than shown in the test results.

 

The  large decline in the last decade may be partly attributed to Thai social media addiction, as usage has soared and many studies show a negative correlation between increased social media usage and academic results. In brief, those that spend more time on social media than studying have worse performance. 

 

Thailand criticised the OECD PISA study results and started the O-Net testing...which showed similar results...so Thailand killed the national O-Net testing. Really! Bad messages are simply rejected...

TiT!

Retired teacher

[craighj]

14 hours ago, dinsdale said:

Poppy cock. Finland with one of the best education systems in the world has a 100% literacy rate for ages over 15. Anyone who believes this 99% figure is deluded and those sprouting it are complete liars.

Absolutely 101% correct.  99% is utter BS, it would be lucky to be close to 75 - 80%.  The majority of older people out on farms up country struggle with even the very basics.  This is typical Thailand government offical talk, trying to cover his own ass!

The education system here is extremely poor, but that's the way some of the fat cats like it.

[dinsdale]

9 minutes ago, Tom100 said:

Thailand standardized test scores vs. OECD averge since 2000. The gold line is the OECD average.

This test is only taken by students that stay in school until age 15, and the dropout rate is high, so the actual average abilities are lower than shown in the test results.

 

The  large decline in the last decade may be partly attributed to Thai social media addiction, as usage has soared and many studies show a negative correlation between increased social media usage and academic results. In brief, those that spend more time on social media than studying have worse performance. 

 

Thailand criticised the OECD PISA study results and started the O-Net testing...which showed similar results...so Thailand killed the national O-Net testing. Really! Bad messages are simply rejected...

TiT!

Retired teacher

Thailand "killed" O-net temporarily. At my school M3/Grade 9 and P6/Grade 6 are taken out of all lessons in January to study for O-net for one month. This isn't about education. It's about advertising. 

[Atlantic Cod]

Teaching Thai 'nationalism' and 'praying' to their government stunts learning objectively from the get go imho

[Tom100]

While Thailand lags, and wonders why It cannot attract more international investment (duh!), China and Chinese international students excel in testing. One research study showed that Chinese HSstudents studied spent 200% more time in school and studying than american sudents. 

 

I visited Chengdu, Sichuan a few years ago and saw that many US tech companies went there for the intellectual talent. No investments in Thailand...none ever likely.  

 

These are all in Chengdu: Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology, Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Amazon, Google, Meta, Electronic Arts, Blizzard Entertainment, Dell Technologies, HP. 

[hotchilli]

20 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

This ranking has raised concerns among Thai officials, with some criticising the survey's methodology as misleading.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with Thai education, 

[Flemo]

Someone is fudging the numbers.

When you see how they run this place, it's obviously lower down the rankings.

[Kat Hao]

Let's rank on Critical Thinking, scoring would be worse

[Chelseafan]

The problem is that state investment in education isn't enough and this equally applies to the UK.

If you want a country to prosper for the long-term then invest in the infrastructure, in this case, children.

[Chelseafan]

deleted

[PETERTHEEATER]

I recommend that the good Professor requests the World Population Review assessors to adopt the same mehodology used by the Tourist Authority of Thailand when, I feel sure, he will bask in the glory of the improved results.

[1happykamper]

107th? Actually I'm impressed and surprised it's that high! 

[smew]

 

I remember, some 16yrs ago, BBK newspaper had an article saying 75% of Thai teachers FAILED their own subject testing in math, algebra, calculus, science, english and history.

Things have not changed, if anything seems indeed got worst !! 

[ignore it]

On the bright side they beat Moldova but Moldova had higher literacy at 100%

 

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by-country

 

 

[wensiensheng]

Being able to read and write Thai and having knowledge of Thai history and customs, isn’t enough to attain a high global ranking. And that is pretty much all the Thai system does. There is basically no acknowledgement of there being life outside of Thailand.

[Dr B]

1 hour ago, safarimike11 said:

"Professor Dr" says it all.

Just in case you weren't aware, Professor is a position, whereas Dr is a qualification, so it is quite normal for professors to use both.

[dinsdale]

1 hour ago, Joe32 said:

Everyone should change their mindset. It's beyond ridiculous. 

 

Schools may not fail students, students may not stay in the same grade for more than one year. Then you create lazy students. 

 

But if you do, you get in trouble with their overprotective parents. This is why schools don't do anything about it. 

 

If students underperform, they'll be labeled LD, ADHD, autistic, and they'll be sent to a doctor, who would be glad to prescribe them some medicine to make money. And when students come back to school, they can just do whatever and end up in the next grade anyway, just because of their label. 

 

Parents play a big role in this. They don't want to lose face, because oh no, it's my fault that my kid is lazy? Nono, we bring them to the doctor, because he/she is sick in their head. Just to avoid responsibility. It's terrible because they often are prescribed medicine that they don't even need. 

 

Besides this, schools also look better if everyone passes. They also avoid their responsibility. We are good teachers, the kid must be sick in their head.

 

But they forget one thing, if students go from P1 to P6 year by year without studying or critical thinking, you'll end up with a bunch of students with P1 knowledge in P6 and so on in Matthayom.

 

And parents are dumb enough to listen to schools and doctors. They can tell them anything and they'd believe it and do as they were told. 

 

But... Ofc, it's a mistake done by whomever made this ranking. Typical behavior same like the parents, avoid responsibility. How can this country get out of this. It's like a play that everyone knows everyone does, and they keep playing pretend somehow. It's insane. 

Agree. As an example in one level I taught this year of three classes, two classes 35 students in each, 8 students passed my final exam in one class and the other 12.  The other class of the three consisting of 40 students, the good students, everyone passed and the majority passed well. Officially all 110 passed.  

[wensiensheng]

15 hours ago, Watawattana said:

I don’t agree. I suspect it is 99% with government evidence available to prove this. 
 

I wonder what the figure would be without the ‘no fail’ policy though. 
 

🤪

Also if those who drop out of the educational system prior to age 15 were included. A fair few of those in the rural villages and you can’t rank what is not included.

[MikeandDow]

I have never know a country that has so many english teachers that are not english,  ??   the standard of education in thailand is very poor 

[BangkokReady]

1 hour ago, Tom100 said:

The poor educational results have been well known for decades based on standardized testing. 

 
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2044427/long-overdue-end-of-o-net-exams.

 

So it all seems to b e going down.  Apart from English, which is probably because kids are watching things on the internet and playing online games.

 

Quote

"Unlike the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), O-Net does not test students' use of knowledge and critical thinking," Mr Athapol told the Bangkok Post.

Sounds like a good idea to switch, but I'm not sure it will give the result the chap in the article wants.  At least it might spur some positive change, though.

[Dr B]

1 hour ago, Tom100 said:

Thailand standardized test scores vs. OECD averge since 2000. The gold line is the OECD average.

This test is only taken by students that stay in school until age 15, and the dropout rate is high, so the actual average abilities are lower than shown in the test results.

 

The  large decline in the last decade may be partly attributed to Thai social media addiction, as usage has soared and many studies show a negative correlation between increased social media usage and academic results. In brief, those that spend more time on social media than studying have worse performance. 

 

Thailand criticised the OECD PISA study results and started the O-Net testing...which showed similar results...so Thailand killed the national O-Net testing. Really! Bad messages are simply rejected...

TiT!

Retired teacher

Good data, but it is a shame that they distort by chopping off the bottom of the y-axis. Makes it look much worse than it is, even though it is bad enough.

[Surasak]

Personally, I have my doubts as to the ability of most Thai teachers to train dogs. Dogs don't ask questions, they just do as they are taught, same as kids in Thai schools. The thing most often on a child's mind is "Why"? But in Thai schools, "why" is a dirty word. Until the quality of Thai teachers abilities are up graded to excellent understanding of the subject they profess to teach, dumb kids will be the result.

[dinsdale]

30 minutes ago, Kat Hao said:

Let's rank on Critical Thinking, scoring would be worse

Be a good one on here. Critical thinking? IMHO there's a fair few posters on that don't actually know what this means and have no ability to do this. Posting lot's of negative emojis isn't critical thinking guys. 

[MikeandDow]

 

4 minutes ago, dinsdale said:

Agree. As an example in one level I taught this year of three classes, two classes 35 students in each, 8 students passed my final exam in one class and the other 12.  The other class of the three consisting of 40 students, the good students, everyone passed and the majority passed well. Officially all 110 passed.  

It a standard All students Pass there are no failure's  in thai schools 

[dinsdale]

Just now, MikeandDow said:

 

It a standard All students Pass there are no failure's  in thai schools 

I know. I've explained many times that this was Thaksin's take on UNESCO's policy of no student gets left behind. An absolute corruption of the intention of this policy. 

[spidermike007]

Much improvement needs to be done, but there has to be motivation and willingness to change the system, to start to motivate students to be curious and to ask questions and to tell their teachers when the teachers are absolutely incorrect. Good education starts there. 

 

A majority of the teachers here are substandard, do not even know the lesson plans they teach, and cannot even pass the tests they give their students. To call the Thai educational system low quality, poor, ineffective, and outdated, would all be an understatement. Much reform is needed, and an argument can be made that the extremely toxic elite here, want to keep the system the way it is, for reasons of avarice, selfishness, and a false and ancient notion that it will protect their status. Those vermin have alot to answer for.

 

By international standards, the two top universities in Thailand are Mahidol and Chulalongkorn. World University Rankings created by Times Higher Education takes into account the reputation of research done by universities and how often papers produced by universities were quoted around the world. They have Mahidol ranked at #610, and Chulalongkorn ranked at #801, worldwide. That is the best this nation is capable of.

 

Shows you how unimportant education is to the elite (who send their kids overseas for college) and this spectacularly toxic administration. 

[chilli42]

21 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

with some criticising the survey's methodology as misleading

Sure blame the survey. If you don’t like the results you see then deflect the blame back on to the survey methodology. Couldn’t possibly be the antiquated education methodologies, and years of under investment in education to blame.

[Surasak]

1 hour ago, safarimike11 said:

"Professor Dr" says it all.

Exactly! If he is a doctor, he cannot be a professor! If a professor he has graduated beyond a doctor. BUT, we obviously have a clear case here, of the dumb leading the dumb, and therefore his arguments can be totally ignored.