Make 'tea money' work for education
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I applaud Education Minister Woravat Au-apinyakul seeking to make school admission "tea money" legal and "on-the-table", so long as it really is used to boost the quality of education offered by the receiving institution.
A quality education costs many times more than schools are allowed to charge, and tea money helps reduce the shortfall.
What the minister should now do is let school fees float, responding to market forces, while at the same time making average scores on national tests like the O-NET public, so parents can better judge the quality of the services they're buying.
At the same time, schools floating their fees should be required to be need-blind in admissions, with financial aid for up to 50 per cent of each entering class, so that no child will be denied admission because parents have insufficient funds.
Burin Kantabutra
Bangkok
