Costs Of Education In Thailand

[Kel]

I was wondering if someone could give me some information on the costs of education for a Thai child in Thailand:

1) Primary School ( per term or per annum) plus are there “private” Thai Schools and, if so , what would the fees be

2) Secondary /High Schools ( per term or per annum) and again, if there are “private" High Schools, the approximate fees payable

Any advice would be appreciated

Many thanks

[Ijustwannateach]

If you wanted western-equivalent education by completely certified teachers in native English, I'd say you should budget between 200-400K baht a year per child. If you're willing to settle for less, even the best public schools are only 10K-20K a year. And there's every price in between, though quality can be up and down- best to try to talk to the foreign teachers (if any) in a school to find out what's really going on; the Thais will toe the party line.

[orchidexpert]

For education systems in Thailand in undergraduated level as follows:

Government school: primary(Not pay any/sem.), High school ( pay 2,000-5,000b/sem.)

Private school: primary(30,000-50,000/sem.), High school(>50,000/sem.)

International school: (50,000-100,000/sem.).High school(>80,000/sem.)

ISB is an international school in Bangkok same level as in up-country but you should to pay around 200,000-300,000 per year.

Anyway, you can send your kids to Thai government school if you wanna let them know about our culture or thai traditional.

[mijan24]

For education systems in Thailand in undergraduated level as follows:

Government school: primary(Not pay any/sem.), High school ( pay 2,000-5,000b/sem.)

Private school: primary(30,000-50,000/sem.), High school(>50,000/sem.)

International school: (50,000-100,000/sem.).High school(>80,000/sem.)

ISB is an international school in Bangkok same level as in up-country but you should to pay around 200,000-300,000 per year.

Anyway, you can send your kids to Thai government school if you wanna let them know about our culture or thai traditional.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

orchidexpert good response exactly what the OP asked for.

One question are the Government School charges for "Sundries" "extra classes" "sports" - or just everday charges for attending that particular school. (this is not a loaded question).

[joe beets]

ISB is an international school in Bangkok same level as in up-country but you should to pay around 200,000-300,000 per year.

I was speaking with one of my student's mother today, and she told me ISB was asking over 500,000/yr.

Anyway, you can send your kids to Thai government school if you wanna let them know about our culture or thai traditional.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Good one.

jb

[Ladphrao]

International schools include a wide range from my experience, 50 to 100,000 baht covers the lower range in international schools but the top ones are 300,000 a year and up. (Can't afford it for my kids but I did look into once when it looked like I would be able to afford it)

[TerryLH]

In Khon Kaen

Catholic girls school about 5000 baht per term. 2000 more to get English 5 hours a week from a foreign teacher.

This is for secondary grades (7-9).

After school classes are 300 baht a month for one hour x 5 days a week.

Most provinces have Catholic schools that have good reputations and are reasonably priced.

T

[Uli]

Hi!

May I make a comment from a university's point of view? I get the school leavers into the international program at Ramkhamhaeng University (http://www.iis.ru.ac.th), with 80% of the Thai students coming from normal (means in best case mini-english program) schools. Over the four years of bachelor studies, you can't see much difference between those coming from "cheap" governmental schools and those coming from "expensive" international schools.

The difference is elsewhere - all students whose parents took care and spoke with them tend to perfom well. All those students parked at an international school are underperformers.

So, if you tend to take part in the development of your children, I would indeed suggest to give them into a Thai governmental school. The rest your children will learn in their private environment by copying and discussing, as long there is a family that works as such.

It is true that students who graduated at a well-named international school speak much better English. However, it needs a while to find out that this is the only difference. There is no more background knowledge, no better understanding of complex environments, no interest in reading something with less than 80% pictures in it, and so on. The result of their quite good oral skills is that we, at university level, assume them to be "better" and concentrate more on those assumed "weaker". Eventually, the "weaker" students perform almost always much better than the "better" ones.

If you would like to know about particular schools, drop us a visit and speak with our students who graduated at these schools.

Doing it the Thai way (expensive equals good) has a good potential to damage your children.

Sorry for such clear words, but they are intended to show the problem rathen than to speak nicely :-)

Uli

[Ijustwannateach]

There's a good bit of truth in what Uli says, especially as many of the Thai schools have quite challenging curricula and excellent teachers. It is ultimately true that the family is more likely to be a predictor for a student's success than his school, and I would argue that a Thai school prepares a Thai child excellently for a Thai university.....

but there's the rub. From what I've seen, even the best Thai high schools still follow Thai methods- which means they work well in terms of social order, rote learning, and memorisation of specific techniques to attack isolated problems. This can be quite important- a good Thai science student, for instance, will be much more comfortable attacking and solving the elements of any individual exam problem than a good Western science student, for instance- and he would be much better at the math, even without a calculator. However, if you ask that same student what the point of the problem was, or what the application could be, or to analyze and extrapolate... then he may be hopelessly lost- and it's not just a result of verbal skills.

Since Thai universities follow from Thai high schools, and input from students is not typically a high priority, this works fine for the Thai universities. However, if one wanted one's child to attend a Western university where the emphasis is more on analytical flexibility and independent work, the typical government school would be terrible preparation. For that reason, I wouldn't recommend the typical Western family put their children into typical Thai schools. It's not just about the expense.

There is also the matter of intellectual responsibility and success. Even in the all-foreign-taught EP programs where I have taught the last few years, it is a constant struggle to make the Thai students understand that copying (plagiarism) is not only unacceptable, but immoral. While they recognize there is a rule against it, and accept when caught that they have "lost" the game, they seem to have no moral understanding of the wrongness of this practice- and these are students who have been taught almost exclusively by foreigners for nearly all of high school. Instilling these kinds of values must need reinforcement from a quite early age.

Finally, there is the question of failing. While there is an old, tired debate on most teaching boards about whether pass/fail is effective as a method of evaluation/enforcement, it is generally agreed that if you are using a grade-based system you must actually *have* a differentiation among grades. The current Thai system fails to recognise this, and is reaping the predictable rewards: illiterate, uneducated students passing at all levels of school simply because they know they cannot fail. The Thai school system cannot succeed until it allows for the acknowledgement of failure. At least some of the international schools are on the IB system where corruption in exams is impossible, and students who fail will fail.

For all of these reasons, I'm afraid I must disagree with Uli in his recommendation that families who can afford the BEST alternatives (IB, other true international standards) let their kids go to Thai schools. While it is certainly true that cesspits such as many of the religiously-affiliated private schools here are simply more expensive ways of doing the same thing or worse, at the top end there truly is a difference here that is worth it for those lucky enough to be able to afford them.

"Steven"

[tavarich]

Where I live at in BKK there are Moslem schools. Our daughter has many friends that attend there. She wanted to go with them but we sent her to a private school instead. I was just wondering what kind of education do those children get there. I know the cost is next to nothing ( my scale ) my question is are they educating them or converting them.