THAI TALK
Schools: it's the quality that counts, not the size
Suthichai Yoon
The Nation



BANGKOK: -- When the news first broke, the message was deceptively blunt and terse: schools with fewer than 60 students would be closed. End of story.

However, the real story was much more accommodating to the actual situation in a lot of remote schools in the provinces. Small schools with only one or two teachers and 20-30 students have reported steadily declining performance compared to national standards - which, for all intents and purposes, aren't all that impressive.

Without much fanfare, about 3,000 small schools have been shut down over the past 20 years, mostly out of necessity: either the only teacher had quit and a replacement was not available for months, or the number of students dwindled to only a handful. The options for the parents weren't very attractive: apply at the nearest school - which could be many kilometres away - or keep the kids at home to help with farm work.

Education Minister Pongthep Thepkanchana, perhaps realising that the first official announcement about the impending action on small schools had been misrepresented or distorted, has gone on television to stress that the policy isn't an across-the-board closure of all schools with fewer than 60 students. It's going to be much more pragmatic and flexible than the message that has been spread around and severely criticised in the social media.

Critics have been quick to take the Education Ministry to task for closing small schools without consideration for local education needs, however inferior the standards might be. Some schooling is better than none, so goes the argument on the other side.

The minister was quick to point out that the word "closure" had probably been misinterpreted. "It's not closure as such. It's more like consolidation or merger of small schools to ensure a proper size that can offer better standards for students," Pongthep declared. He was trying to shoot down the alleged scenario that young kids, especially those in remote provincial areas, would be left without schooling and that teachers would be fired and school directors rendered jobless.

"Not at all. Every student will still get proper schooling - in fact better schooling. Teachers will continue to teach, and school directors and employees will be fully accommodated if a school is merged with another school," he explained.

Not all schools with fewer than 60 students will be consolidated with another school, though. "Local circumstances will be taken into consideration. We will sound out the parents and the local communities before any decision is made about the future of a small school. Some will remain unchanged - including schools in the three southernmost provinces or those located up in the hills - circumstances that will render it impossible for students to be moved out of the area without great physical or social difficulties."

In other words, not all the estimated 7,000 schools currently with very few students will be subject to the consolidation policy. Each case will be considered on its own merits and local communities, not local education officials, will have the final say in the process.

To be fair, there are some valid arguments for merging small schools in the provinces into bigger ones to improve efficiency of scale and better management of budgets. The minister insisted that the budget (about Bt1,700 per head) won't be curtailed, and support from the ministry will in fact be boosted, with a better management system.

Tiny schools in remote villages have had to put up with shortages of everything from the number of qualified teachers to learning tools, as well as the services of advisers for further studies.

If some schools in this category have managed to survive with reasonable education quality, it's due mostly to the contribution of devoted individuals who have volunteered to work for such deprived schools. In most cases, success stories have been few and far between. The general management quality of the local education authorities is, to put it mildly, far from satisfactory.

In principle, therefore, the proposed consolidation of small, badly run schools into bigger ones with closer attention from the central authorities, and higher standards of teaching and learning, could work well. In practice, though, this policy can produce concrete results only if the private sector and parents play an active role in guiding the process laid down by the Education Ministry.

Education, after all, isn't about school or class size. It's about purpose, sacrifice, devotion and the quality of teaching and management, whether it's a school with 20 or 20,000 students.


-- The Nation 2013-05-16

My daughter went to an elementary school of only 86 in all 6 years. She had six classmates so each kid learned to the level of mastery. Top computer lab 15 years ago. All her classmates went to high school and university, from their Top-rated village farm community school.

In Thailand large schools would better concentrate resources for embezzlement. Gotta share too much with too many people otherwise.