Reforming Thailand’s Educational Funding System

             These results indicate that since Thailand’s 1999 major educational reform, the quality of Thai education has not progressed as originally projected. This is despite efforts from academics, educational experts, and the Office of Standard Certification and Quality Evaluation to improve the quality of Thai education in various ways. But I see that the best way to improve the quality of Thai education is to start by changing per capita student funding because this factor directly affects the students themselves as well as the quality of educational management. 

Actually, equal funding is given to all schools in Thailand. This type of quantitative support does not improve the quality of education as much as it should, especially for small, rural schools, which lack both teachers and necessary educational resources. This results in their inability to measure up to the standards set by larger urban schools. Therefore, smaller schools, especially those in the rural areas, need to receive more funding in order to improve.

 Quality of Education

               Vijit Srisa-arn, Minister of Education, included this issue in a policy document on educational reform that he presented to the National Legislative Assembly on November 5, 2006. A part of his plan is to augment per capita student funding in the 2007 educational year. The Fiscal Office will also consider giving additional development funding to small schools to help allay their expenditures and improve their quality of education.

             This article concludes a series of articles titled “Classifying Schools by Norm” that were published in 2004. In these articles I proposed a system for enhancing educational support, using norms for quality and efficiency as indices for additional funding. My assumption is that increasing per capita funding is good but would not automatically improve the quality of education. However, my proposal would allow schools with lower educational quality to receive additional per capita student funding, which could – in turn – be used to augment educational materials, infrastructure, or other materials that would help to increase student motivation to learn and, in the end, improve the overall quality of Thai education. The process of doing this would be as follows:

 First, establish an index to measure school quality and efficiency^. 

Group B (high quality) schools are schools with high quality but low efficiency.

Group C (highly efficient) schools are schools with acceptable quality but high efficiency.

Group D (ordinary) schools are schools with acceptable quality but low efficiency.

Group E (weak) schools have lower than standard quality but high efficiency.

Group F (dead) schools are schools with lower than standard quality and low efficiency.

 Specific Support for Each Group of Schools

Elite schools: The government should allow free competition within this group of schools. The government would allow these schools to set their school fees because competition and market mechanisms in free market conditions are important tools for monitoring the quality of these schools. But high quality always comes at a high cost. The government should support students who are intellectually capable but financially unable to attend these schools as well.

 High quality schools: These schools have high management costs because they are trying to attain the same quality as the elite schools. Therefore, the government should provide financial support to schools in this group by giving them normal funding but allowing these schools to collect additional tuition fees to motivate the schools to improve their quality. However, the government should monitor these schools and encourage them to improve their management standards in the due time. One strategy these schools should be encouraged to consider would be joint ventures with the private sector, which would increase their efficiency of operations.

Weak schools: The government should support these schools by giving them additional funding, academic assistance, and educational specialists. The government should also encourage these schools to seek privateer joint ventures. It should give these schools deadlines for improvement, and if they fail to improve, they should be closed or sold to the private sector.  

Dead schools: The government should not allow these schools to continue. It should replace administrative staff, close these schools, amalgamate them with others, or sell them to the private sector, which could then rejuvenate them. However, if some of   these schools are in rural areas or are for specific educational needs, they cannot be closed. The government may give additional funding to these schools to facilitate better management and to ensure the schools pass minimum quality and efficiency standards.

            This is my recommendation to classify the quality and efficiency of each school. In turn, each school’s rating would determine the type of government funding each school would get, according to a six-division classification scheme. We can see that increased government funding for education is necessary. But giving schools money alone will not necessarily improve Thailand’s quality of education. Therefore, the government should provide other types of support, for example, by providing schools with specialists and giving schools the freedom to self-administrate.