Expert urges education for poor
If Thailand wants to escape the middle income trap in 20 years, the government should re-allocate its resources to prioritise educating the underprivileged, an educational development expert said this week.
Kraiyos Patrawart, assistant managing director of Thailand’s Quality Learning Foundation, made the remark following the release of the latest Ordinary National Educational Test (O-Net) results. The average score for almost all subjects was below 50%.
“Both O-Net and Pisa [Programme for International Student Assessment] results over the past three years have pointed to the same problems: a gap between students in the cities and rural areas, and between the haves and have-nots,” Mr Kraiyos said.
The scores reflect Thailand’s economic and social disparities, he added.
“In 20 years’ time, today’s sixth graders will have joined the workforce. Unless we raise the quality of education, as well as the living standards of the lower 40% of Thai society, we will not escape the middleincome trap,” he said.
Improving education for the underprivileged would also help reduce crime and other social problems, he added.
The government’s budget should focus on those areas most in need, particularly rural areas, as students and schools in cities can seek support from parents, communities and the private sector, Mr Kraiyos said.
The O-Net results for the last academic year, which were released on Saturday, showed the average scores of 9th grade students (Mathayom 3) fell below 50% in all five key subjects — mathematics, English, Thai language, social studies and sciences.
Meanwhile, the results for 6th graders (Prathom 6) showed that students failed four out of the five subjects on average, with only Thai language yielding an average score of just over 52%.
The O-Net results also showed students at university demonstration schools, or Satit schools in Thai, outperformed their peers at schools under the supervision the Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec) in every subject, according to the National Institute of Educational Testing Service, which organised the tests.
The results also showed that students at large schools earned the highest average scores, while city kids did better than students in rural areas.
Prof Sompong Chitradub, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Education, said educators, teachers and students were pressured to improve scores from last year. However, this does not appear to have worked, he said, adding the tests should be scrapped.