Military precision is just what Thai education needs

Just as the public was beginning to question the government’s will to reform education, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha announced a task force to spearhead an overhaul of the system. Taking the helm as chairman of the so-called education superboard, the prime minister says major change is needed to address years of under-performance despite huge budgets.
Composed of high-ranking officials and economists, the superboard met for the first time last week. It has been tasked with proposing new policies and ensuring that agencies work towards the same goals together. Its task force will oversee the new policies’ implementation and follow-up on the fresh education blueprint. Prayut is hoping the new working group will cut through red tape and other obstacles to implement change speedily.
He is not alone. The public has been waiting a long time for real impact from education reform. The arrival of a task force led by the prime minister is a hopeful sign, following years in which Thai education has lacked direction. Without a clear target of what we have to achieve when it comes to education, Thailand has fallen behind its regional neighbours. Different agencies work in isolation and are subject to constant changes of rules and regulations. With each new government have come new policies and goals, destroying any continuity of action or planning.
Soon after coming to power, General Prayut announced that Thai students were suffering too many hours of study, which left them no time to develop outside the classroom. The Office of the Basic Education Commission then seemed to contradict that claim by saying students were spending too much time on extracurricular activities. Though the intentions may have been good, Obec’s intervention likely caused confusion and left teachers as well as students lacking a clear direction.
Previous governments have flunked the test of education reform with a series of mistakes. There has been much talk of improving areas such as English teaching in preparation for this year’s regional integration under the Asean Economic Community. But none of the proposals has had a concrete outcome. The reality is we will find it almost impossible to achieve anything of substance until the governments can decide on our ultimate goals for education, and stick to them. In the absence of such fundamental benchmarks, students and teachers are left struggling with inconsistency and frequent change.
If this government wants to improve the quality of Thai education, the first priority is to examine whether its current shortcomings are down to a lack of good policies, to poor implementation, or to both. At first glance, the education superboard offers hope of progress. Its goal to synchronise education management at different levels and ensure it is in line with the national economic and social development plan seems like a good one. But we have seen the same goal set out by each preceding government.
Rethinking policies and trying to come up with better ones is a good start, but without effective implementation it won’t lead anywhere. The superboard must first learn from the mistakes of its predecessors, before laying out its plans clearly. Each policy should come with a time frame for implementation plus a plan of evaluation. With no time frame, policies are likely to peter out into well-meaning action and ideas with little impact. The superboard has to bear in mind that education reform is a long-term investment. More important, it must find a way of ensuring that future governments stick by a single blueprint. Otherwise Thailand’s education system will simply return to Square One with each change of administration, as it has been doing for decades now.