No cheating on education reform

Witnessing governments come and go, we have lost count of how many failed to lay the proper foundations for the education of our youth. But we can wait no longer for education reform if we want to stay competitive as a country. Moreover, all parties agree that education can play a vital role in the reconciliation process to end years of political conflict. 

The question now is how we progress under the new government.

There are encouraging signs. Education has received the biggest slice of the annual national budget – 20 per cent of the Bt502 billion total. However, funding is seen as the least of its problems. The Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) points out that the Education Ministry’s budget has doubled during the last decade. The problems with the education system don’t stem from a lack of resources, but rather from their inefficient use. The TDRI study suggests that, rather than focusing on one or two areas, such as the curriculum or reduction of study time, reforms should be comprehensive, addressing all aspects of the system. 

General Narong Pipathanasai, the newly appointed minister, can kick-start the process by following the ministry’s education-reform proposal for 2015-2016. But he and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha must heed the TDRI’s recommendations if they want to avoid failure. The ministry has proposed a phase-by-phase process, while the TDRI has underscored the need for simultaneous implementation of reform for all aspects of the education system.

The resources are in place and so is the information. The biggest challenge now is the execution. The ministry must realise that whatever action it takes will have a longstanding impact. What Thailand needs now is long-term and sustainable reform. The country can no longer afford periods of trial and error. General Prayuth’s proposals for improving the curriculum and reducing study hours may be good, but his ideas must not be permitted to overshadow the wider reform picture.

Problems that need to be addressed are deep-seated and have accumulated through years of neglect and mismanagement. The quality of teaching, to name just one, must be addressed through raising standards for those hired to teach, tackling their debt problems and solving teaching shortages. And all this at the same time. 

Only through such a holistic approach can we create strong foundations to guarantee that future generations get a “world-class” education. 

Past governments have left a trail of failure. But the mistakes provide lessons: the universal free-education scheme that failed to deliver, the free tablet computers that didn’t improve learning, the central assessment tests and admission policies that kept changing and left students and parents confused. 

The latest reform process must address all the problems with a sustainable plan that remains in place long enough to bring real, positive change. Students can no longer be used as guinea pigs in trial-and-error experiments. Thailand can’t afford to lag behind as our neighbours overhaul their education systems to compete in an evermore-interconnected world of trade and commerce. Our military government has the advantage in being able to implement its plan with little or no opposition. But such authority could be a double-edged sword: launching reform without checks or proper review could be a misstep that lands education back in the last decade.

We have arrived at a new beginning amid a becalmed political environment. There can be no excuse for our new government: it must present us with education reform that improves the lives of Thailand’s 400,000 teachers and millions of students once and for all.