15-Year Free Education Policy Needs Review: Thai Ombudsman

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Ombudsman: 15-year policy needs review

Praphasri Osathanon

Saowanee Nimpanpayungwong

The Nation

BANGKOK: -- Ombudsman Siracha Charoenpanij yesterday urged the Education Ministry to review its policy of providing 15 years of free education after his officefunded research showed student quality has dropped in recent years.

Siracha suggested the constitutional clause prescribing the state provision of 12 years of free education be amended.

"The Constitution should require just nine years of free education," he said, "If the government has adequate budget, it may increase the number of years itself without the need to have the legal stipulation".

According to Siracha, educational services in Thailand have been heading downward in terms of quality over the past decade because the Education Ministry has placed its focus on free education for all. This free education has been given even to children who do not really need it.

"The budget for children who do not need free education would have been better spent on the needy," the ombudsman said.

The Office of Ombudsman assigned Dr Kittiya Evans, an independent researcher, to study the 15 years of free education policy. Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques, research has found the policy failed to provide genuinely free education and educational services overall were poor in quality. On the cost of education, parents covered by the research claimed they still had to pay schools for it. The difference is the payment is now made in the form of donations.

On the quality of educational services, Siracha pointed out that the National Institute of Educational Testing Service found students' scores dropping over past years, with average scores lower than half in all subjects.

He said the Swissbased International Institute for Management Development (IMD) also found the quality of Thai students had diminished after the government introduced the 15 years of free education policy.

"The Education Ministry must review this policy before it fails children and brings Thailand to crisis," Siracha said.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Suchart Tadathamrongvej has threatened to take legal action against his detractors. He has become the subject of intense criticism after suggesting that famous schools consider recruiting the children of their financial donors.

"I've never said the donations will secure school seats. Donations are not corruption," Suchart said.

He claimed some media outlets misinterpreted his words.

"The donated money is for the benefits of all at schools, not just for any particular individual. The donation is not tea money," the education minister said.

-- The Nation 2012-02-17

Edited February 17, 2012 by Scott
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[pogal]

The 150 year old Ajarn Amata (Immortal Ajarn) are the ones that need a review. Kick them out and get some new blood! Too many of these old cronies with old fashioned ideas are incharge of all the important jobs in Thailand. Most of them are retired but remain in their jobs or on the books as consultants, etc. Many of my Thai friends who are Ajarn's complain about them and say there will be no change until they go (die?). They get so many kickbacks they dont want to leave and so stay on stifling change.

TIT

[Scott]

The overall performance of students will generally drop as the number of students increases. With universal education, you have a lot of students who are neither good students nor care much about education.

If a school or any educational system can elect to have only the best and the brightest, then test scores and performance will be high.

[Chris Lawrence]

Lack of education leads to less political trouble. What does Siracha Charoenpanij want, everyone to become farmers?

[KKK]

If free education is cut back to 9 years how do the poor get to go to university? Does the ombudsman really belive that university education should only be for those who can afford to pay for it?

Edited February 17, 2012 by KKK

[Tanaka]

If free education is cut back to 9 years how do the poor get to go to university? Does the ombudsman really belive that university education should only be for those who can afford to pay for it?

That is what he says. Amazing country. Keep the poor down and give the money to those who already have everything. And he is the minister of education. All government people and big chiefs here are a bunch of retarded halfwits. It looks more and more like there really is no hope for Thailand. So sad.

[Scott]

There is simply too much emphasis on test scores and too little emphasis on actual learning. We have students who are spending endless amounts of class time taking same O-net exams for example. So much of the teaching is geared toward passing a test.

We have a group who comes into evaluate our performance and they will check certain students for reading. The students are coached to memorize the passage, so even students who cannot read will look good. It's very sad.

[talisman01]

My school has the opposite situation to yours Scott; At my school, M3 and M6 have their O-Net this weekend. The M3 students should be ok, but the recently upgraded O-Net for M6 is going to be very tough for my students and few, if any, will get a decent grade. I have devoted two classes to preparing M6 for the test and teaching them exam-taking techniques but the style of questions in the new test do not reflect what my students, and presumably others elsewhere, have learnt (and other classes are learning) from their Access textbooks.

[Tanaka]

My school has the opposite situation to yours Scott; At my school, M3 and M6 have their O-Net this weekend. The M3 students should be ok, but the recently upgraded O-Net for M6 is going to be very tough for my students and few, if any, will get a decent grade. I have devoted two classes to preparing M6 for the test and teaching them exam-taking techniques but the style of questions in the new test do not reflect what my students, and presumably others elsewhere, have learnt (and other classes are learning) from their Access textbooks.

What? Do you really mean that they are not given the questions and answers in advance to they can study them and learn by heart? No wonder the scores are so low. How do they expect the students to show high scores if they are not shown the answers? Not fair.