By: Supanida S.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s fifteen years tuition free education policy is not that easy in practice and heading to failure. Many educational people, teachers, parents and students are criticising that this policy will be effective and will reach the good quality or not. The issue of corruption, doubt in fair distribution and its high budget may cause many people to doubt the policy if it is that easy in practice and will be effective.
The government launched the new policy for fifteen years tuition free education for Thai students from kindergarten to grade twelve, which costs about nineteen thousand million baht. The policy aims to support for the tuition fee, textbook, education kit, school uniform, and extracurricular activity. This tuition free will not be available in every school. The school students who have those rights must be under the Office of the Basic Education Commission, the Vocational Education Commission, or the Office of the Private Education Commission. This new plan will be executed on May 17th, 2009.
The policy itself is very good but in practice is not that easy. There are many gaps for corruption. If the government does not strictly keep an eye on it, this would be another opportunity for corruption again.
“The main idea of the policy is good but the practice is unlikely to succeed because the corruption in Thai politics still exists,” said Mrs Aucharapan Kerdkaew, a teacher at Kasetsart University Demonstration School.
Corruption is a big problem for Thai society. It seems that there is no where to an end. And it is a great obstacle for many good policies. The new policy is not executed yet, but the scandal has already appeared. It is about the price of the textbooks that the government will provide to the schools for free, is higher than the price of textbook in the private schools. Therefore, to think further, there would be another corruption concerning with the education kits and school uniform for sure. Unclarity in auctions will happen. The greedy politicians and the merchants will start to take the advantages from the children, our own future.
What about distribution? It must be distributed thoroughly. What measures can be taken to ensure that the students who need help will get this support not the one who does not need it? And did the government consider about “Ghost students”; the students who did not actually go to school but the school puts their name on the list of students in order to get the money, how can the government measure the actual number of students? Maybe the government will distribute some power to the local legislative to manage their own budget. But it is back to the same old problem, corruption. In the local legislative, there are also many corruptions and it is quite hard to scrutinize because it seems like a normal practice to the local people.
“The Education system’s structure is too big thus we need to separate the structure into smaller organizations for easier operation but still need the central organization to scrutinize the separated organization because the separation will open the opportunity for the local politicians to make profit from the government budget,” said Mrs. Aucharapan Kerdkaew, a teacher at Kasetsart University Demonstration School.
Quality is another issue of concern. Everything is likely to be free, so what about the quality and the standard? Who will be the one who ensure that the education kits and school uniform will not be in a lower standard? Including textbook, it is the most crucial thing for learning. Government plans to set up the committee to responsible for purchasing textbooks for every school in the same curriculum. It will be a problem for some schools that the textbooks do not fit the students and the teacher. According to the plan of The Office of the Basic Education Commission, textbook itself is free but the students must borrow it and pass away to the other after they finish that course. The textbook will last for three years then the committee will distribute the new version to the students to continue the same pattern of borrowing.
Again the scandal about the old curriculum textbook, has been heavily criticizing. As the policy will effect in the upcoming semester, this textbook problem falls into the students in next semester. The Office of the Basic Education Commission has placed an order to purchase textbook with the 2001 curriculum and the school cannot purchase the latest version. Then do you think this will be the effective way for the student to learn? Textbook or the curriculum must be changed or edited every 5 years like many countries in the world. So if the students use old textbook, the long run problem will occur to our future.
Nineteen thousand million baht will be spent on this project. Majority of Thai people are wondering where does this budget come from, and believing that the policy needs the very high budget that the government has no potential to effort the price because the whole country is facing very serious economic depression.
Those are the doubts that need the government answers and ensure of the well scrutinizing of this policy. The policy would be effective with quality or not, depends on the practice of the government officers. This is just the planning process but many signs have shown the unlikelihood that this policy will not work.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s fifteen years tuition free education policy is not that easy in practice and heading to failure. Many educational people, teachers, parents and students are criticising that this policy will be effective and will reach the good quality or not. The issue of corruption, doubt in fair distribution and its high budget may cause many people to doubt the policy if it is that easy in practice and will be effective.
The government launched the new policy for fifteen years tuition free education for Thai students from kindergarten to grade twelve, which costs about nineteen thousand million baht. The policy aims to support for the tuition fee, textbook, education kit, school uniform, and extracurricular activity. This tuition free will not be available in every school. The school students who have those rights must be under the Office of the Basic Education Commission, the Vocational Education Commission, or the Office of the Private Education Commission. This new plan will be executed on May 17th, 2009.
The policy itself is very good but in practice is not that easy. There are many gaps for corruption. If the government does not strictly keep an eye on it, this would be another opportunity for corruption again.
“The main idea of the policy is good but the practice is unlikely to succeed because the corruption in Thai politics still exists,” said Mrs Aucharapan Kerdkaew, a teacher at Kasetsart University Demonstration School.
Corruption is a big problem for Thai society. It seems that there is no where to an end. And it is a great obstacle for many good policies. The new policy is not executed yet, but the scandal has already appeared. It is about the price of the textbooks that the government will provide to the schools for free, is higher than the price of textbook in the private schools. Therefore, to think further, there would be another corruption concerning with the education kits and school uniform for sure. Unclarity in auctions will happen. The greedy politicians and the merchants will start to take the advantages from the children, our own future.
What about distribution? It must be distributed thoroughly. What measures can be taken to ensure that the students who need help will get this support not the one who does not need it? And did the government consider about “Ghost students”; the students who did not actually go to school but the school puts their name on the list of students in order to get the money, how can the government measure the actual number of students? Maybe the government will distribute some power to the local legislative to manage their own budget. But it is back to the same old problem, corruption. In the local legislative, there are also many corruptions and it is quite hard to scrutinize because it seems like a normal practice to the local people.
“The Education system’s structure is too big thus we need to separate the structure into smaller organizations for easier operation but still need the central organization to scrutinize the separated organization because the separation will open the opportunity for the local politicians to make profit from the government budget,” said Mrs. Aucharapan Kerdkaew, a teacher at Kasetsart University Demonstration School.
Quality is another issue of concern. Everything is likely to be free, so what about the quality and the standard? Who will be the one who ensure that the education kits and school uniform will not be in a lower standard? Including textbook, it is the most crucial thing for learning. Government plans to set up the committee to responsible for purchasing textbooks for every school in the same curriculum. It will be a problem for some schools that the textbooks do not fit the students and the teacher. According to the plan of The Office of the Basic Education Commission, textbook itself is free but the students must borrow it and pass away to the other after they finish that course. The textbook will last for three years then the committee will distribute the new version to the students to continue the same pattern of borrowing.
Again the scandal about the old curriculum textbook, has been heavily criticizing. As the policy will effect in the upcoming semester, this textbook problem falls into the students in next semester. The Office of the Basic Education Commission has placed an order to purchase textbook with the 2001 curriculum and the school cannot purchase the latest version. Then do you think this will be the effective way for the student to learn? Textbook or the curriculum must be changed or edited every 5 years like many countries in the world. So if the students use old textbook, the long run problem will occur to our future.
Nineteen thousand million baht will be spent on this project. Majority of Thai people are wondering where does this budget come from, and believing that the policy needs the very high budget that the government has no potential to effort the price because the whole country is facing very serious economic depression.
Those are the doubts that need the government answers and ensure of the well scrutinizing of this policy. The policy would be effective with quality or not, depends on the practice of the government officers. This is just the planning process but many signs have shown the unlikelihood that this policy will not work.
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