Most Thai Teachers Fail In Their Own Subjects

[sirchai]

Most Thai teachers fail in their own subjects

BANGKOK (AFP) -- High school test results in Thailand have revealed a failure rate of more than 80 percent in mathematics, biology and computer studies -- among the teachers.

The failure rates for teachers who took exams in their own subjects were about 88 percent for computer studies, 84 percent for mathematics, 86 percent in biology and 71 percent in physics, the education ministry said.

And almost 95 percent of about 37,500 secondary school directors did not score a pass mark in English and technology, according to the ministry.

The poor results have ignited controversy in Thailand about educational standards.

"Even teachers fail, so how can we raise the quality of students?" Education Minister Chinnaworn Boonyakiat was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post newspaper.

More than 84,000 teachers and school directors took the exams, the first of their kind.

-- (c) Copyright AFP 2010-06-09

So five out of 100 directors had the chance to buy the test before?

What about the test results for the Thai English teachers? Guess it was too terrible to mention.

A good question is indeed who’s teaching the teachers? The blinds can’t lead the blinds...

[Finlaco]

I think most posters have kinda missed the main point. One assumes that this wasn't a 'surprise' exam, and that the teachers had time to prepare.

It says a lot about culture when one cant be bothered to prepare for the exam.

I'd love to see my own government requiring teachers to sit a similar exam every five years or so.

[Chris Lawrence]

Maybe the reporter has an axe to grind; the reporting is not clear. What mark would you give the reporter?

How many unqualified teachers were in the count?

What exam was taken?

Is the release a political stunt?

What % of teachers in Thialand took the test and from what areas?

Do the marginal areas have a higher %? etc,etc,etc

Is my spelling any good?

The report leaves a lot more unaswered questions than it really atempts to answer. What it does open is anacdotal critisim. This will never help a situation.

Just my thoughts....

[gotlost]

:angry:Promote the incompetence.

[Arjay]

Most Thai teachers fail in their own subjects

BANGKOK (AFP) -- High school test results in Thailand have revealed a failure rate of more than 80 percent in mathematics, biology and computer studies -- among the teachers.

The failure rates for teachers who took exams in their own subjects were about 88 percent for computer studies, 84 percent for mathematics, 86 percent in biology and 71 percent in physics, the education ministry said.

And almost 95 percent of about 37,500 secondary school directors did not score a pass mark in English and technology, according to the ministry.

The poor results have ignited controversy in Thailand about educational standards.

"Even teachers fail, so how can we raise the quality of students?" Education Minister Chinnaworn Boonyakiat was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post newspaper.

More than 84,000 teachers and school directors took the exams, the first of their kind.

-- (c) Copyright AFP 2010-06-09

Why am I not surprised. Seems they know how to make "malatov cocktails" crude barricades and shoot M-79's though.

[rheinwiese]

That's really scary

[SiriusBlack1]

this is no real surprise to me at all. i teach, i see, i cry

(Oooh, nice new board format!)

84% failure rate in mathematics! That's, like, almost half!

[wyynduff]

Oh my god. No wonder when I asked peeople in Thailand with 13 years of education

and did not recognise such names as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Dalai Lama and

Gandi. Could not point where Europe was or where the USA was. Could not tell me

a single planet in the Universe.

Most can't point to where Thailand is on a map of the world.

It seems to me that if it ain't Thailand it ain't taught, that's why everyone is so nationalistic and farangs are not important.

Most of the well educated attend schools abroad. Singapore, Uk etc.

It's hard to learn when you're not allowed to question.

I'm considering pulling my daughter out of school.

She's been there two years and still can't read numbers 1-10 if you jumble them around.

She can sing plenty of songs though.

It just seems a waste of money to me...

If someone does not think there is a problem with The Thai education system by western standards, they must be blind.

It was set up to keep people in their economic place and to create ample field workers who expect little and demand less. The rich and powerful want it that way, and they send their children to private schools and foreign schools to get a better education and assure them their "rightful place" in the Thai society. Why is it the westerners can not think for themselves, do they think because it is suppose to be the same for everyone in the west. that it is how the Chinese-Thai and rich Thai want it here?

Blame the tests for being too hard or the teachers to uneducated but past governments gutted the education by taking them from a very respected profession to a job with little future and less respect than it ever had before.

Edited June 9, 2010 by wyynduff

[otherstuff1957]

When you see results like this you have to ask what was wrong with the test. Many years ago I was talking to a guy who was teaching introductory accounting in English at a newly opened Thai university (St. John's, if it matters). He was telling me the Thai University Affairs Office, which set the curriculum standards, required him to create final exam questions of a level of difficulty he would expect to find on the United States CPA (Certified Public Accountant) exam -- an exam taken after a person has studied accounting for four years and worked at least two years in the field. In other words, the people writing the test questions were not trying to discover how much of the material that had been presented to the students they had learned, they were simply trying to create a barrier to success so that the only students who could get a passing grade were those who cheated or those who got favorable treatment one way or another. I'll bet this exam was the same.

By the way, when I was trying to teach high school mathematics in English, I couldn't get a copy of the curriculum in English, so I bought a number of the books students use to cram for the university entrance exams. The topics covered included things like symbolic logic, calculus, and trigonometric equations. Since the school week allowed for four hours a week of study over three years, I can guarantee no students could have learned all that subject matter.

So the problem is with the people making the tests. It may be true that many Thai teachers really do not know their subject matter, but the tests are not properly designed to show that. Any time you have 80% of testees "fail", your criteria for failure are not valid.

^ Some very good points here. I'm trying prep a class of M6 students for their university entrance exams. I'm using materials from Chula and Thamasat, two of the top universities in Thailand. There is an average of one grammatical error on every page of the test prep books! I imagine that the tests for other universities are going to be even more poorly written.

I have seen any number of insanely difficult tests produced by upper lever Thai teachers. They all seem to think that 'showing off' how clever they are will make people respect them more.

[Daren]

Who wrote the tests though? Of course I would never underestimate a teacher's stupidity, nor would I put it past the exam writers to create a test that wasn't passable by anyone! I see a disturbing number of multiple tests with multiple correct answers or worse.... no correct answer!

Surely not all of the blame lays on the shoulders of the teachers.

[crazydrummerpauly]

While the teachers may not be of the highest quality, one should also consider the quality of the tests. I've seen Thai language tests in mathematics and physics. These tests are very difficult, and I went to a top 20 grad school for physics. The level of difficulty of the questions is roughly equivalent to 2nd or 3rd year university, some even higher.

My strong suspicion is that the tests themselves are the largest part of problem. These tests are written by individuals holding PhDs, most of whom obtained their post-baccalaureate credentials abroad. They are out of touch with what a high school level course should consist of. The most able Thai teachers tend to set excruciatingly difficult tests for their students, expecting an average of about 30% and then curving the results.

Very thought-provoking post. It shifts the whole debate away from the results to the nature of the testing process, and to the motives and intelligence of the

test-creators. If this post is factually true, then nearly everything else in this thread is way off the mark.

[EarthAlien]

There is no national curriculum from what I can gather. Worse, the teachers get to write their own course work.

My wife asked me to help her little sister with some home work. When I saw what her teacher had given her, I couldn't believe it.

This is a mid to high priced School in Bangkok. The English exercises made no sense at all.

When I laughed I seemed to offend.

The usual social rules. "Don't complain, its not polite"

The government could easily adopt a national curriculum from an English speaking country. Its not the teachers fault, in my opinion its the governing body.

Yes, absolutely its the fault of the governing bodies with their myopic, antiquated and arrogant views on their "perfect educational system". When The Thai ministry for education starts to apply international standards of teaching and removes the stupid "zero student failure" policy then maybe we'll see some progress.

Oh my god. No wonder when I asked peeople in Thailand with 13 years of education

and did not recognise such names as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Dalai Lama and

Gandi. Could not point where Europe was or where the USA was. Could not tell me

a single planet in the Universe.

I knew a uni lecturer in marketing at a prominent university that told me many stories that were just so insane. Such as the fact that the text books for the curriculum were 10 years old and NONE of the techniques applied to present day dynamics. When she complained the response was a virtual "mai pen rai". When the department eventually were granted budget to update text books they blew it on something else and a large slice went into the faculty directors pockets! This is the kind of typical practice that is going on daily within the Thai system.

also as it is common culture to give most students a pass even if they did't how many of these teachers had lower marks than were shown here.Yes its a worry...If any body doubts my comment go ask some teachers...

This is one thing that really peeved me off when I was teaching English. We were told to "not fail" any student. Especially in private colleges where the owners were reliant on the student fees revenues from parents with kids that couldn't care less about learning and used the class as a joke and game playing opp. Test paper remarks such as "26/100 Failure,.. did not apply him/herself at all throughout the course,- showed total disinterest and was impossible to teach" had to be amended to something like,..."Student shows strong potential to develop and seems enthusiastic about learning English. With naturally smart and bright characteristics this student could really excel with a little more effort". It was either that or....hit the highway Jack we'll find a replacement teacher that's happy to such shit and embellish reports!

This report is frankly misleading.

The test that the teachers took (OBEC) was not the same kind of test that is taken by the students (O-NET). It's perfectly possible that the test was particularly difficult, even for experienced teachers. The results are meaningless and the journalism shoddy.

"MIsleading".... you must be from the Ministry of education. I have personally worked within the education system for many years and this report is just the tip of the iceberg.

No wonder that a Thai Uni degree is considered internationally as not being worth the paper it's written on. That's why all the top Thai academics, doctors and professors all have overseas tertiary qualifications.

This kind of report is in my view long overdue and needs to be further broadcast and investigated.

Time to wake up Thailand,... educationally you are the laughing stock of SE Asia and being trampled all over by Vietnam, Korea, China, Japan and even the Philippines.

This is one major reason I'm taking my kids OS for at least some of their educational years and ALL of their higher education during which time I hope and expect that the "MPR" influence and mentality will be seen for the transparent hypocrisy and debilitation that it mostly is!

Oh... dear...sorry I got a bit carried away.... didn't mean to be so rude!.... Mai Pen Rai!

[Gimbo]

Me and my Thai wife and her two boys from a previous marriage moved to my homecountry a year and half ago. And the boys

education level from Thailand is causing some problems for them in school here.

Maths - They are miles ahead of their peers in my country. So much so that they have become lazy in that subject has the school do not seem to able to give them a challenge. The teacher says they are at least 2 years ahead of their class mates. They have both gone to Isaan village schools.

In other subjects they are a virtual blank....so perhaps they just had a particularily good math teachers.

world History: They had no knowledge at all.

English: They could spell, and the older who was an 8th grader could read a few words.

Geography: Could find Thailand on a map...but not where Europe or America was. And did not understand how to read f.eks a road map at all.

They could sing every song in the Thai universe though.

Here in my country though they are starting to shine, and both are doing fine in school. The younger struggling a bit with his reading though, since he virtueally ahd to start from scratch.

And finally...I only came into their life 3 years ago....

[Foggy Bottom]

Hmmm - I see a lot of defensiveness from people who either confess to being teachers, or to having upper level tertiary education, I also see some reasoned argument - all intended to excuse the failure rate.

Sorry people, but I disagree with all of you. A high pass mark is not indicative of a flawed test or training regime, nor is a high failure rate. When I took my industry standard vocational exams in IT, the pass/fail mark was 80%, and the failure rate amongst candidates was over 50% - it made people learn the topics and do the practical exercises until they could do them without thinking. In a former career in the Air Force, some courses has a pass fail mark of 90% (but did involve training for life preservation topics).

I remember in my younger days, that one respected quality of a teacher was that they could answer immediately, almost all questions from a student, regardless of how obtuse, and the information they gave would be correct. In Thai culture the lack of students questioning teachers makes them forget what they learned in training, and thus their knowledge deteriorates - just think of which subjects you studied at school and what your retention rate is for the subjects you've not used since leaving school. This "questioning is disrespectful and causes loss of face" culture has to be stomped on if Thai education is to be turned around. Personally, I believe all teachers, at all levels, in Thailand should undergo both annual retraining and annual re-examination in their core subjects every year. As long as the teachers remain complacent and incompetent, then no-one should expect the students to be anything else but what their teachers are.

Related to that, one poster above is also correct - core competency starts with the governing authorities. If they too have no clue what they are doing and what they expect from students, how can they realistically expect to set correct delivery levels for their front line teaching staff and tuition directors? It is the role of the Education Minister to state the final objectives of education at each level, and for those cascading down the ladder from him/her to incrementally expand the delivery plan with realistic and achievable detail. This has been the fundamental failure in Thai public education since it was conceived just over a century ago.

Recent cases of gross ministerial ineptitude include Thaksin as Education Minister under Chaovalit (pre-1997 crash) when he authorised the supply of computers to primary and junior schools that did not have electricity. Appointing himself as Education Minister in 2001 or 2002 whilst simultaneously a new and inexperienced PM, such that his sole memorable educational decree was that all Thai history texts were to be rewritten "to tone down the history of aggression and warfare between Burma and Thailand", then he went off to Rangoon to sign a satellite communications deal with the junta. The following year, he capped state educational institutes' foreign teacher salary maxima, whilst simultaneously introducing the minimum monthly taxable salary that was four times higher than the capped salary.

There are far too many similar incidents throughout the history of Thai education. Like many other state services in Thailand, the only comprehensible solution would be to scrap it completely and bring in foreign professionals to develop a system beneficial and workable to Thai students. This is a solution I have believed in as both a private school tutor, and as a state university lecturer, as a university teacher's teacher, and as a business person trying to acquire employees from the Thai populace. My workplace experience of the inadequacies and inefficiencies of institutionalised Thai education are broad and deep. I do not make the above recommendation lightly, but sadly, I see no other remedy, now or in the medium term.

Four years in a Thai state university can be summed up with the question - in an English department with 80 teachers, of whom 12 were native speakers, why did 60+ of the Thai teachers NEVER speak English when delivering their core subject, regardless of whether the students were freshmen or seniors, or post-graduates?

[kevozman1]

Oh my god. No wonder when I asked peeople in Thailand with 13 years of education

and did not recognise such names as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Dalai Lama and

Gandi. Could not point where Europe was or where the USA was. Could not tell me

a single planet in the Universe.

Most can't point to where Thailand is on a map of the world.

It seems to me that if it ain't Thailand it ain't taught, that's why everyone is so nationalistic and farangs are not important.

Most of the well educated attend schools abroad. Singapore, Uk etc.

It's hard to learn when you're not allowed to question.

I'm considering pulling my daughter out of school.

She's been there two years and still can't read numbers 1-10 if you jumble them around.

She can sing plenty of songs though.

It just seems a waste of money to me...

Excuse me, most people I know could point Thailand out on a map but I think

Europe and USA (Europe being a whiole continent) are more significant than

Thailand and not a fair comparison. Thank you.

[denissr]

blind leading the blind

It would be interesting to do the same exercise in other countries. I wonder how many would do any better?

Not that many would pass, if today done hand written tests no computers etc, 2% would be lucky to pass.

Took longer to learn in my day but it stuck!

I'm not sure you are correct. My opinion, but having been around and dealt with my Grandchildren

in the States, they are a lot more educated at a younger age than I at the same age.

I'll bet there are people that would be quailified to teach here in Thailand. It could be that teaching has become

a not so desirable job, so the people that are taking teaching jobs are less qualified. Maybe raising the

benefits of teaching and stricter hiring. But you have remove the cultural

practice of hiring relatives and and buying jobs.

[maibs]

I do fully agree that the quality of teachers is a huge problem and needs to be addressed.

However, ones should also consider the environment where teachers work and where students need to study.

Many up-country school as truly 4rd. world quality without windows, with dusty roads just in front of the school, with 40 and more degree celsius temperature, with birds above students heads shi...ing on down to the students.

I know some schools without electricity, therefore there are not fans.

Everything in education must be improved!

1.) The quality of teachers and if they don't develop themselves and fail standard tests they should not be allowed to teach.

2.) The classrooms must have all proper windows and air-con.

[billythefish]

Not good enough..Who are teaching the teachers??

The Teachers of course - and these failure rates are based on the Thai syllabus!!! Is there any wonder why Thais are not exactly at the forefront in anything?....apart from lying/cheating/scamming etc. Jesus - what hope have the kids got.

[IvanDobsky]

Read below

I didn't realise a fan of George Bernard Shaw would be able to get his punctuation wrong. It should of course be :

'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.'

[Xangsamhua]

The article is a very brief report. I suspect it is inaccurate or misleading. I would need to know more. As some people have pointed out, we don't know what the tests were like. The report suggests that they were the same as those done by the students, but this has been challenged. I wonder about the numbers. 37,500 directors of secondary schools? There are nowhere near that number of secondary schools in the country. There are probably about that many primary and secondary schools together (based on 2005 Ministry of Education data).

Yes, we all know about Thai people's difficulties with English. There are very clear historical reasons for this and it's only been in the past 20 years that Thailand has been addressing the issues. It'll take a while yet before Thailand catches up to the ex-colonial countries. Incidentally, the last comparative data I saw for TOEFL (2005) showed that Thailand had the weakest scores of all ASEAN nations, but was doing better than Japan!

[Spalpeen]

I'm not even slightly surprised. My wife has a friend, a Thai woman in her fifties, who teaches English in school. I've yet to hear her speak a single word of English. If I try speaking to her she just grins at me vacantly. What chance have the children she's supposed to be teaching?

[samjaidee]

this is no real surprise to me at all. i teach, i see, i cry

(Oooh, nice new board format!)

84% failure rate in mathematics! That's, like, almost half!

Thank you for injecting some humour into this rather depressing thread.

It will, unfortunately, take at least a generation to change anything. When students are encouraged to ask questions then there will be changes but not until then. Once those children have gone though the education system and finally become teachers themselves then maybe it will be different. IMHO

[asdecas]

There is no surprise here. Education in Thailand, as in many other developing countries, is a means of social control. As such, it would require the overthrow of the people in whose interest the system operates for educational standards to improve. I see no more sign of that than I do of changes to the entrenched political elite.

[dreamtime]

I can't imagine how you could send a child into this "educational" system. The curriculum is useless, the teachers are useless, the material is mostly useless. What's the point? There has to be a better way.

[windosill]

I taught in a Thai school before and witnessed a Thai teacher telling a class that they should not sleep under a tree at night because the tree will take all of their oxygen! :0)

Edited June 9, 2010 by gdnuttall

[pisico]

Gee! That makes me feel better. It's just as bad in other countries: 2 or 3 wrongs do not make the situation in Thailand any better.

According to coreyp2's rationale why bother? It's just as bad elsewhere. Let's stay in mediocrity until others leave us way, way behind.

Thailand has an inward culture that leaves most of the world history and cultures out of their scope of interest and/or curricula. Teachers are notoriously deficient in several important disciplines. English is considered to be a tolerated evil to pass from grade to grade. And if they should fail there is the good old Social Promotion that keeps the mediocre anchored in their ignorance but incorporates them into the mainstream of professionals. The reason in countries such as the USA and France where social promotion is used "not to leave anybody behind, no matter how deep is their lack of prowess or qualifications" those people benefiting from social promotion (specially minorities) do not patronize the professionals of their own race because they know how they got the diploma hanging on the wall of their office.

Would you entrust a dear one to a doctor who graduated as a result of Social Promotion?

Thailand is going through a period of awakening in which they are finally acknowledging that Thai culture alone will not give the country a foothold in the Global sphere of science, commerce and technology.

Instead of bemoaning the lack of proficiency of Thai teachers is more important the fact that has been admitted publicly. This is an important step forward that will no doubt change the current situation in a few years. So I truly hope. Pisico

Try googling "teachers fail test". It's not only in Thailand where teachers fail. USA and UK are well represented.

[runker]

Give them the teacher's editon of the text book and the answer key to the test and you got yourself a certified teacher.

[Scott]

In many ways the discussion of whether the test is too difficult or the teachers too uneducated. The basic question is why would a Ministry devise a test for their staff that is basically can't be passed? If they did, then that is a reflection on how them and how out of touch they really are.

Teachers in Thailand are, by and large, not the best or brightest, but they are educators and many have gone to school in good faith. They don't stay in the field because of the great pay.

Many, many problems in the education system, I think.

[moetownblues]

Most Thai teachers fail in their own subjects

BANGKOK (AFP) -- High school test results in Thailand have revealed a failure rate of more than 80 percent in mathematics, biology and computer studies -- among the teachers.

The failure rates for teachers who took exams in their own subjects were about 88 percent for computer studies, 84 percent for mathematics, 86 percent in biology and 71 percent in physics, the education ministry said.

And almost 95 percent of about 37,500 secondary school directors did not score a pass mark in English and technology, according to the ministry.

The poor results have ignited controversy in Thailand about educational standards.

"Even teachers fail, so how can we raise the quality of students?" Education Minister Chinnaworn Boonyakiat was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post newspaper.

More than 84,000 teachers and school directors took the exams, the first of their kind.

-- (c) Copyright AFP 2010-06-09

Come on this is a joke right? The teachers do 5 yrs university they can't possibly be that stupid. I was told that thailand had one of the highest standards of education in the world.

[moetownblues]

I can't imagine how you could send a child into this "educational" system. The curriculum is useless, the teachers are useless, the material is mostly useless. What's the point? There has to be a better way.

Well I guess that is the fault 100% on the current government