Govt must pre-empt looming teacher crisis

You can’t raise standards of politics, ethics and honesty without first drawing up a practical and results-oriented road map for education reform. The Education Ministry has so far talked about random changes. The crux of the issue – how to get qualified teachers so as to enable student-centred learning – hasn’t been addressed in any meaningful way. Cosmetic changes may be in the works but what the country really needs is a major overhaul.

The National Reform Council (NRC) may have hinted that it attaches importance to education, but the topic is being treated as a separate subject instead of assuming an over-arching role in the whole process of reinventing the country’s administration.

There are five main requirements for the country’s education system at the moment: 

l Decentralise authority to local education units.

l Draw up curricula to correspond with career requirements in the real world.

l Promote vocational education to fill severe shortages in major industries.

l Beef up the government’s 

student-loan projects.

l Improve quality of teachers as a matter of urgency.

A nationwide crisis among teaching staff could lie in wait if effective action is not taken soon. In the next four years, about 120,000 of the total 400,000 teachers will be due for retirement. That means 30 per cent will need to be replaced, which will have a severe impact on this major transition.

Hiring teachers, especially for government-run primary and secondary schools in the provinces, is notoriously flawed. Applicants are known to have cheated in their tests to get employed. Many have been caught red-handed. No education officials can offer a figure for how many have slipped through without being spotted.

If those who aspire to be teachers choose to pass exams by cheating, how can we expect students not to follow the same pattern? That, indeed, has been the case. A recent study concluded that an alarming percentage of students admit to having cheated in their exams.

Dr Somkiat Tangkitvanich, director of the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), wrote recently that if this new batch of teachers isn’t qualified, or if the application system isn’t overhauled, we run the risk of suffering a generation of bad teachers. That’s because those who join the official teaching staff around the country will serve 30 to 40 years before they are due to retire. In other words, we would be putting our children at the mercy of teachers who can’t teach for one more generation.

The problem lies with the current system of hiring teachers, which is highly centralised, with the Education Ministry handling the process. Individual schools around the country don’t get a say in deciding what kind of teachers they need.

Strange but true, administrators in government-run schools don’t get a chance to even interview incoming teachers to determine whether they fit the local environment or the conditions of the school.

Dr Somkiat said: “It has been proven that students’ achievements correspond directly to the quality of their teachers. Therefore, the government will have to allow schools a bigger say in picking teachers.”

Bill Gates, who has devoted much of his financial resources and personal energy to improving the quality of teachers in the US, has said:

“Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.”

He has also been quoted as saying that technology is just a tool. “In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”

There is in fact a chance for this interim government to take specific actions in this regard, if it is serious about raising the standards of teachers to avoid a looming calamity.

As the TDRI director pointed out, good, qualified teachers could be recruited from admission test scores at Teacher Training Faculties at most universities. Also, the average income of teachers has in the past decade inched up to a level comparable to other professions.  In fact, the average salary scales of teachers at the Basic Education Commission has doubled in the same period.

Competition among aspiring teachers for posts in BEC schools has been extremely tough: Only two out of 100 applicants are accepted. That means that if a proper system is installed, the objective of creating a new crop of good, effective teachers can certainly be fulfilled.

Do we detect the necessary political will and vision in the current government to try to tackle this most important education issue? Sad to say, there is little evidence of it so far.