Thailand

(For details see ICT 2000 Thailand national ICT policy and Learning Technology "To Reach the Unreached" in Thailand.)

Education in Thailand is undergoing a reform process led by the Education Reform Act adopted in 1999. In the context of this reform, a national policy was formulated by the newly established National Institute for Technology for Education (NICTE).

The Government of Thailand recognises that it is vital to realise that ICT must be viewed as a tool for achieving broader national objectives, both social and economic, rather than regarding ICT as merely an end in itself. The policy is formulated in recognition of the vast potential of ICT to spread economic activity, democratic principle, wealth distribution and social benefit provision such as education across every region of the country.

The National ICT plan recognises that a massive programme to introduce computers, multimedia, and distance education facilities to all state schools is imperative. This drive must be accompanied by the development of suitable courseware specifically designed for electronic delivery.
Initiatives include to:

• Give all teachers, college lecturers and professors, school children and college students opportunities to learn to use ICT. The goal is to employ ICT as an enabling tool to access information and gain knowledge through self-paced learning, or through interactions with teachers and fellow students.
• Link schools, colleges, universities, and libraries electronically to provide students, teachers and lecturers an enriched environment in which distant resources can be made available remotely at finger tips.
• Make full use of ICT and distance education to meet the needs and aspirations of all citizens for continuous education and skills upgrading without regards to age, profession, distance, or geography.

Specific goals of the National School Informatisation Programme are:

• To introduce at least one computer per 80 primary school students and one computer per 40 secondary school students within five years
• To allocate, on a continuous basis, an annual budget of 1,000 million baht to acquire ICT equipment such as PCs, communication modems and, where appropriate, satellite receivers, and multimedia equipment. The amount should be sufficient to equip state schools with up to 30,000 PCs a year
• To connect all universities, colleges, and later on, secondary schools to the Thaisarn/Internet.

Further goals include to

• set a target for all teachers and students to be IT and Internet - literate by the year 2002
• centrally produce 250 titles of academic software and contents annually and provide funding worth 500 million baht per annum to various communities for content development as well as provide budget for localizing 2000 titles of useful foreign content.
• achieve a PC density target of 1:20 in secondary schools and of 1:40 in primary schools as well as considerable investment in LAN and standardized administrative software
• provide IT for education and professional development to the under-privileged, the disabled, and people who look for lifelong learning
• provide adequate radio frequencies for the education sector
• invest in research and development in IT for education no less than 400 million baht per year

The UniNet supports and connects all universities and higher education institutions of Thailand. The SchoolNet project provides and manages a network for schools. At the end of 2002, there will be 4,180 secondary schools in the schoolnet with three accounts per school and 40 hours per account, each having a storage capacity of 7 megabytes per school.