Inequality In Access To Schools In Thailand

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CHALK TALK

Inequality in access to Schools

By The Nation

This is the first of two articles summarising important findings from my recent research paper titled "Schooling Access Inequality and Educational Wage Trends in Thailand, 19862009".

Thailand has experienced a phenomenal increase in the educational attainment of its labour force, with average years of schooling among them rising from 5.3 years in 1986 to 8.2 years in 2009.

Using samples of youths in 1988, 1999, and 2009, we find that the share of those predicted to attain a primary school qualification (grade 6 and below) has declined sharply throughout the three periods.

On the other hand, the share of high school and college enrolments among these successive youth cohorts increased rapidly (see chart). The question that arises from this is: Could there be important differences in the family characteristics between the less and more advantaged youths?

Our estimates show strong evidence of intergenerational transmission of educational attainment in Thai households.

In other words, the educational level of parents positively and importantly determines the schooling outcome of their children.

Other influential factors include socioeconomic background variables such as household incomes and where family homes are situated.

While children from rural households were clearly at a great disadvantage in the mid1980s compared with their urbandwelling counterparts, those disadvantages became less important in the ensuing decades and by 2009 they had become statistically insignificant. This was largely attributable to the continuing strong government support for mass education by providing free education (up to high school completion), and by building more schools and colleges throughout all regions.

As is often the case in other countries, children from highincome families are preponderantly more highly educated.

The study also finds the average per capita monthly household income for collegegoing students almost twice as high as the average income for those expected to attain at most an upper secondary qualification (grade 1012). This income gap remains roughly constant throughout the two and a half decades under study.

Other important questions also emerge from this study.

On the surface, while Thailand has succeeded in raising the average amount of schooling among its labour force, the income gap remains high between the parents of collegegoing students and those of their less educated counterparts.

This is likely the result of the large disparity in the quality of basic education provided by resourcepoor versus resourcerich schools. If this hypothesis is correct, government needs to address the schooling quality issue seriously and provide a more equitable platform to give students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds a level playing field to prepare for a college education.

Dilaka Lathapipat, PhD

Thailand Development Research Institute

-- The Nation 2011-01-17

[Ijustwannateach]

Nothing at all surprising about this. The sad thing is that it has to continue to be re-demonstrated country after country, when all the groundwork was already laid for this in various European and Asian countries. Even the work of American sociologists (much opposed by those in rich school districts) shows the same thing.

Money matters in education.

[oldgeezer]

Am I missing something here? What would the data look like if one were to include women?