Low-income parents in a fix as new term nears

Given these high costs, most parents earning less than Bt20,000 a month will have inadequate funds to pay school fees and buy essential goods and learning materials. They will either have to borrow from relatives or loan sharks or pawn belongings to generate the cash they require, the UTCC said.
“The back-to-school period is an economic indicator. More spending will be seen this year. However, it is not a good sign, as people are not spending more because of higher confidence in economic growth, but mainly because of higher prices,” Thanavath Phonvichai, director of the UTCC’s Economic and Business Forecasting Centre, said yesterday.
Last year’s back-to-school spending amounted to Bt46.9 billion.
In a survey of 1,199 parents from May 3-7, almost 40 per cent of respondents said they would have to spend more this time. Parents expect to pay an average of Bt7,142 per pupil for this new school term, compared with Bt6,939 per pupil last year.
More than half said they would have to spend more because of higher prices for such items as uniforms and footwear, as well as for school entrance fees.
Yajai Chuwicha, head of the Chamber Business Poll, said the highest proportion of spending would be for school fees at 40 per cent, entrance fees at 33 per cent, other management fees at 6 per cent, normal payment for a new school term at 5.8 per cent, student uniforms and footwear at 5.7 per cent, textbooks at 5.1 per cent, learning materials at 2.7 per cent, and the rest for miscellaneous expenses.
She said the products for which parents expected to face higher prices included uniforms, bags, shoes and socks, textbooks, and stationery.
More than 40 per cent of respondents said they did not have enough money to cover the costs of the new school semester.
Most of the spending is for charges that have to be paid to schools. Although the government has a policy to support education free of charge for 12 years, parents said they must pay a number of additional charges directly to schools.
Parents who could not earn enough to pay for the new school term said they had to borrow from relatives, followed by borrowing from loan sharks, going to pawnshops, borrowing from banks, and using credit cards. Saowanee Thairungroj, vice president of the UTCC’s research division, said the survey also found that a lot of parents want the government to rethink its plan to distribute free tablet computers to primary-school students.

TABLET SCHEME
Fifty per cent of respondents were highly worried about the tablet scheme. They said it would lower the quality of studies by distracting students towards playing games rather than using the devices for studying.
They also said teachers would not easily use the tablets as materials to improve their teaching quality.
To increase the efficiency of the tablet project, Saowanee said the government should distribute such devices to secondary students rather than young pupils.
In the UTCC survey, parents expressed strong concerns about the educational system’s ability to prepare youngsters for the upcoming Asean integration.
They said the government should focus on promoting the study of foreign languages, including those spoken in Asean countries, develop technology and modernise the teaching system, increase teacher quality, and improve the quality of course syllabi.