Narong aiming at reform priorities
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Wants more than structural change of education agencies
FRESH EFFORTS have started to reform the country’s education. Although Education Minister Admiral Narong Pipatanasai has not ruled out the possibility of an overhaul of organisational structure, there is still hope that structural re-engineering will not be a focus this time around.
“No, we have not discussed the organisational structure much. We are going to address things that are more important than the structure,” Narong said after emerging from a meeting with the steering committee on educational reform last week.
The committee resolved to set up seven subcommittees for the mission of improving educational services. And the good news is that none of them is tasked with overhauling the organisational structure.
The subcommittees have been tasked with improving relevant laws, budgets, IT systems and the educational database as well as teachers’ productivity and development. They will also tackle decentralisation and curriculum reform.
If the structural overhaul takes place in response to the wishes of those who have made proposals, the country may waste 15 years of efforts to reform the sector.
Based on the National Educational Act of BE 2542 (1999), the previous educational reform process heralded a streamlined approach, decentralisation, and the engagement of all stakeholders in the delivery of educational services, among other positives.
As a result, the University Affairs Ministry was abolished in the early 2000s and so were many department-level agencies under the Education Ministry. The move aimed to facilitate faster work processes and engage stakeholders for united efforts to ensure Thai children enjoyed a quality education.
Now in 2014, key figures in the Education Ministry, however, have sought to make their organisations bigger.
Office of Basic Education Commis-sion (Obec) secretary general Kamol Rodklai has already made it clear he will propose that his office be upgraded into a bigger organisation known as ‘Tabuang’ in Thai. That is almost the size of a ministry.
Before the previous reform took place, Thailand used to have the Tabuang Maha Wittayalai or the Ministry of University Affairs.
“When we become a ministry, we will oversee agencies like the Primary Education Department, the Secondary Education Department, the Department of Curriculum and Instruction Development and Educational Standard, and the Department of Education for People with Disabilities, the Underprivileged and Smart Children,” Kamol said.
Word has spread that the Office of Vocational Educational Commission (Ovec) wishes to upgrade itself into a Tabuang too.
Narong said that the Obec, the Ovec, and the Office of the Education Council had presented proposals on organisational structures to the steering committee.
But he said: “We have not reached any conclusions on their proposals.”
The minister said he was confident that ongoing efforts to reform the sector would be different from previous attempts.
“We will focus on practical, tangible implementation,” he said. “For example, all 20 educational service zones will name 15 schools each for the pilot concrete phase of decentralisation next month.”
He said the chosen schools would enjoy a free hand in running their services and if their educational quality improved, many more schools would join the decentralisation effort.
Narong said the steering committee on educational reform had already toyed with the idea of setting up a ‘super-board’ to oversee the sector.
“This ‘super-board’ would serve like a national committee to oversee education from the national perspective, not just from the viewpoint of the Education Ministry,” he said.
These comments have brought hope that efforts to better organise education may finally be on the right track.
A National Reform Council committee is also trying to ensure that the new constitution prescribes the need for educational policies that boast continuity, transparency, accountability and independence for any interest group.
“While it is urgent to push ahead |with education reform, it is also necessary that the government lay down national mechanisms and assign people to implement education reform con-|tinuously for at least 10 consecutive years,” Amornwich Nakornthap, the spokesman of the NRC committee on education and human resource development, said.
Education Council secretary general Piniti Ratananukul believes that the success or failure of reform efforts hinge on the direction set by the NRC and the National Legislative Assembly.
“But of course, all are determined to pursue sustainable educational development and management of educational services that are free from political influence,” he said.
Observers, meanwhile, hope that these efforts will deliver real results. They want something more than an overhaul of the structure and setting up working panels.
