Access for pre-primary, primary and lower secondary is moderately high in Thailand. Primary education is close to universal. However, there are still a non-negligible proportion of population in all subsectors from pre-primary to non-formal and informal education who have limited access to educational services. Access to education is limited to children who are largely from low socioeconomic status and/or from remote rural areas, migrant workers, children of urban migrants without house registrations, those in slums, and those from diverse ethnic communities especially in remote areas, especially in the Northeast, North, and deep South. Equitable access should be ensured for all children (UNESCO 2011).
There have been impressive successes in increasing participation and expansion at all levels of education in Thailand. However, there are serious issues of quality across all levels of education, which affect the competitiveness of Thai labour force and hence causing a serious threat to future of the country. International test-assessments show that the learning achievements of Thai children of 15 years of age are far behind in learning than their counterparts in other countries. There is very high concentration of low-level learners. In addition, approximately 50 % of children are reported to have achieved Level 1 or below out of six learning levels of PISA 2009 in all three subjects, Reading, Mathematics and Science. It is believed that the main reason of poor outcomes for Thai students is due to the lack of quality educators.
The key problems are low quality of education in primary and secondary schools in rural areas and in tertiary institutions in urban areas. A key issue is how to attract the highest quality individuals to the teaching field. Another challenge is to implement the student-centered learning approach at all levels of education.
Education is mainly financed by the national budget although Local Administration Organizations (LAOs) are encouraged to mobilize local resources for education. The Thai government’s general commitment to decentralization was reflected in the Local Administrative Bodies Act (Decentralization Act of 1999) hich requires that 35% of the national budget be delegated to local governmental bodies such as the LAOs and gives local authorities the power to levy local taxes. One mechanism for facilitating achievement of this objective would be to let LAOs take responsibility for local education. However, greater reliance on local areas to fund education (fiscal decentralization) has the danger of contributing to greater regional inequality, given the greatly diverse fiscal capacities of different regions (UNESCO 2011).
The Ministry of Education will have to advise LAOs on budgetary allocations to schools. In practice, this policy has yet to be effectively implemented (UNESCO 2011).
Regarding the decentralization policy, there have been concerns if the Local Administrative Organization (LAOs) administrators have adequate knowledge of education. They may emphasize physical infrastructure construction rather than improving educational quality. The Ministry of Education of Thailand is pursuing reform of its education system through decentralization, universalization of pre-primary education, expanding capacity of upper secondary schools, and ensuring opportunities for lifelong learning for all Thai people. To address education sectorwide issues and challenges facing the country, strengthening the Government’s capacity in planning, managing, implementing and monitoring the education system at all levels is required. In the coming years, there will be the need to build capacities and practices for more systematic assessment, analysis and use of available data and indicators at different levels of the educational administration especially down to the local administration organizations so as to better inform and improve policies, planning and management decision-making (UNESCO 2011).
