Experts want education 'shock'
Academics are calling on relevant agencies to shock the Cabinet into realising the severity of the educational crisis before they propose concrete solutions for implementation under the revised national education plan.
“The education plan is like an academic text with content that can be used as reference, but it cannot be used in practice that much,” Associate Professor Sompong Jitradub of Chulalongkorn Univer-sity’s faculty of education said yesterday. He was speaking at a meeting hosted by the Office of the Education Council (OEC) to draw recommendations from relevant agencies for the second revision of the education plan.
“Don’t give the Cabinet an overly academic draft of the revised plan,” he said. “You [the OEC] have only about 10 minutes to make the presentation before the Cabinet decides on whether to approve the draft. So you have to use the draft to highlight crucial educational problems that will shock them.”
The second revised national plan will be used from 2012 to 2016 to upgrade the country’s education in accordance with current changes. The first revised plan was for 2009-2016, while the original plan was for 2002-2016.
Professor Paitoon Sinlarat, vice president of Dhurakij Pundit University, also said that the plan should be kept concise and simple, with priority given to actions needed to improve education. “This would help remind [schoolteachers and administrators] to implement the plan,” he explained.
The academics told the OEC to collaborate with key education agencies to implement the plan. Both said agencies had so far preferred to follow their own plans, resulting in failure of the national education plan.
Details of the scope of the second revision are under discussion. So far, the main points its covers include upgrading quality, boosting educational opportunity, reforming the teaching profession, providing vocational and higher education according to the needs of the labour market, information and communications technology in education, supporting research and development.
It also calls for increasing human-resource competitiveness in preparation for the Asean Economic Community, improving education in the South, ridding institutions of drug crime, boosting vocational and technical students’ image, and making small schools more effective.
OEC secretary-general Sasithara Pichaichannarong said it would write a new and more detailed strategy based on the government’s educational policies to be used until 2015.
The OEC has targeted early next year as the deadline for Cabinet approval of the strategy and plan.
