Thai committee mulling major education shake-up

[webfact]

Committee mulling major education shake-up
KETKAN BOONPEN
THE NATION

BANGKOK: -- THE EDUCATION Ministry's Steering Committee for Education Reform has ordered a review of a proposal to have schools become juristic entities, Education Minister Admiral Narong Pipatanasai said yesterday.

The move came after the sub-panel on educational law reform proposed recommendations on more administrative independence and the effectiveness of public schools in providing basic education up to diploma level.

The recommendations cover two areas. First, would schools be autonomous or juristic entities under state supervision, and would the status of teachers be lifted from civil servants to state employees?

Second, would schools and teachers remain in the civil service but have more freedom in managing their budgets and manpower?

Narong said he thought the first option was "too extreme", so the sub-panel was instructed to study details and re-submit both options at the committee's next meeting. The chosen option will be tabled at a public forum to hear the opinions of officials from relevant agencies, he added.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/politics/Committee-mulling-major-education-shake-up-30266326.html


-- The Nation 2015-08-11

[NongKhaiKid]

Another ' mull ', another shake up, another day with another load of the brown stuff.

[jerojero]

THIS ought to be interesting, given the ongoing years and decades of neglect to address a fundamental flaw in this country: a proper education system.

[tbthailand]

And here I thought they might be dropping the revisionist history they are teaching...

[DavisH]

How does the song go?

[otherstuff1957]

The people doing the mulling are usually administrators and bureaucrats, NOT people with classroom experience. What the Thai education system needs is simple:

1. Eliminate the 'no fail' policy/custom.

2. Reduce average class size from 40-50 to 20 or so.

3. Students take from 12 to 17 different subjects per semester. This should be reduced to 5 or 6 so that they can concentrate on learning the basics.

4. Scouts, Thai Dance and some of the other required subjects should become electives.

5. The expectations in the Thai Curriculum are unrealistic. Achievable goals should be set.

6. English tests should be written by native speakers to international standards, not by a Thai professor who writes tests with the goal of showing everyone how clever he or she is.

[Lupatria]

Far more important is to finally educate the hordes of morons in countless fruitless committees.

[dageurreotype]

THIS ought to be interesting, given the ongoing years and decades of neglect to address a fundamental flaw in this country: a proper education system.

Built upon what exactly? The 12 commandments? Given that the education system here continues to use nationalistic rote learning I wouldn't hold your breath.

[halloween]

The committee members are products of the Thai education system. To come to grips with the basic flaws of that system they will have to admit their own education was seriously flawed.

[Farang99]

This is just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Unless and until there is a system for producing competent and well-educated teachers with the ability to teach there will be no adequate public education system.

[fred Kubasa]

Not an education shakeup, only employees , not students would be affected and, probably, in a negative fashion.

[h90]

The people doing the mulling are usually administrators and bureaucrats, NOT people with classroom experience. What the Thai education system needs is simple:

1. Eliminate the 'no fail' policy/custom.

2. Reduce average class size from 40-50 to 20 or so.

3. Students take from 12 to 17 different subjects per semester. This should be reduced to 5 or 6 so that they can concentrate on learning the basics.

4. Scouts, Thai Dance and some of the other required subjects should become electives.

5. The expectations in the Thai Curriculum are unrealistic. Achievable goals should be set.

6. English tests should be written by native speakers to international standards, not by a Thai professor who writes tests with the goal of showing everyone how clever he or she is.

The problem is that you can't fire all teachers and pull 1 million new teachers out of some hat. So you have to teach a new generation of teacher first.....

Some kind of monitoring system is also needed to ensure that the teacher are doing what they should.

[lildragon]

The people doing the mulling are usually administrators and bureaucrats, NOT people with classroom experience. What the Thai education system needs is simple:

1. Eliminate the 'no fail' policy/custom.

2. Reduce average class size from 40-50 to 20 or so.

3. Students take from 12 to 17 different subjects per semester. This should be reduced to 5 or 6 so that they can concentrate on learning the basics.

4. Scouts, Thai Dance and some of the other required subjects should become electives.

5. The expectations in the Thai Curriculum are unrealistic. Achievable goals should be set.

6. English tests should be written by native speakers to international standards, not by a Thai professor who writes tests with the goal of showing everyone how clever he or she is.

If they want to become this educational 'hub' then a serious overhaul of the entire system is needed. You have listed most of the main points (there are still many many more).

But I seriously don't have faith in them to actually change anything. Like so many other things in Thailand the attitude is so entrenched that it would take something huge to change it. Loads of chatter box committees and bureaucrats aren't going to do it IMO.

[tbthailand]

there are ample sources of "best practices" which could be directly adopted by the country if they wanted to improve the education from K-12 and for university degrees.

I do not claim to be any kind of an expert in education, but I have quite a few friends who are. Any country (not just Thailand) which wants to improve the results of it's education investment doesn't need to re-invent the wheel.

FWIW, the organizational changes here look to be more of a question about how the centralized, elite-controled bureaucracy will continue to control the structural aspects of the system, including the content and the curriculum...

[Traveling Sailor]

The people doing the mulling are usually administrators and bureaucrats, NOT people with classroom experience. What the Thai education system needs is simple:

1. Eliminate the 'no fail' policy/custom.

2. Reduce average class size from 40-50 to 20 or so.

3. Students take from 12 to 17 different subjects per semester. This should be reduced to 5 or 6 so that they can concentrate on learning the basics.

4. Scouts, Thai Dance and some of the other required subjects should become electives.

5. The expectations in the Thai Curriculum are unrealistic. Achievable goals should be set.

6. English tests should be written by native speakers to international standards, not by a Thai professor who writes tests with the goal of showing everyone how clever he or she is.

I agree with every item here. I would add #7, #8 and #9: 7. Create and make manditory a "pass test" for every grade, from 1 to 12. 8. Eliminate any teacher who does not accept, and answer, questions from students. 9. Any teacher who has less than a 70% "pass rate" in each class he or she teaches, should be required to attend retraining classes during school break. If the "pass rate" does not improve in the 2nd year, in addition to the manditory retraining classes, the teacher's pay should be reduced by 1/3 until the 70% "pass rate" is met.

[Emster23]

"proposal to have schools become juristic entities, Education Minister Admiral Narong Pipatanasai said yesterday."

Admiral? Admiral? I would like to see his CV regarding education and experience in field of education. I would hope at some point the government came to realization that perhaps having ministers and bureaucrats have at least some working knowledge of department they are running might be a good idea. Not just political plum to pay off some favor, or some buddy from in group.

The flaws in whole system are so evident to even casual observer, and so many proven resources and solutions available from other countries.... seems valid conclusion that they don't wish to work on making ed system work.