15 years tuition free education, will be effective?

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.

When will the politicians stop being greedy?

By: Supanida S.

I wonder when Thai politicians will stop corrupting and when the merchants will stop their greed. This week if you follow the news, you will know the news about the low quality of free school milk. When I saw this news, firstly I was so upset and then started blaming the greedy politicians and the milk vendor. Poor little children! Why they have to be the victims for the greediness of the adults? For me, this is unacceptable.

Recently, the director of Pak Lek School in Choomporn’s Phato district complained about the lack of milk quality that the government gave the children for free. The Pak Lek School’s students refused to drink because it is tasteless. And the teachers believed that it simply made from powder with high proportion of water. After this became a big story, the Food and Drug Administration did the laboratory test and confirmed that the free milk has the fat level of only 2.6% while the FDA standard is 3.2%.

Milk package was just a small plastic bag with the label writing “school milk” and the expiry date on it. There is no approval sign of Food and Drug Administration and nor the name of manufacturer. Free school milk project is under the control of the local administration. I think this is a result of the local administration and the local suppliers who are blinded with greed. The supplier intend to not print the manufacturer name because they know that this milk is low standard and produced in the bad will and tries to cover themselves if people know that milk is lack of standard.

I do not know how they can be so greedy. They can do anything to get the profit as much as they can even hurt the others or at least, the children.

This is not the first time that free school milk scandal has happened. It had happened along since the project of distributing free school milk was launched a decade ago. The true objective of distributing free milk for the children is, the government wants to promote children’s physical and mental growth. But in the real world, seem that the objective is just like the cloud that can see but it is nothing. No one take it for serious matters but see it as an opportunity for gain money and a lot of profit.

Milk provides a powerful nutrition package of nine essential nutrients including calcium, protein and potassium which is essential for children. Milk also contains seven different vitamins and minerals needed for many body functions. Nutrition in milk will help the physical and mental development and performance of children. So what will happen to the children who did get malnutrition? But more worse is the toxic milk.

The current free milk scandal is now on an investigation process of Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission. They are preparing to investigate into the bidding process. I think it is good to do so. But I wonder why we have to wait for the story to become people interests before the investigation happen. How the manufacturers can produce drinking milk without the FDA approval? And could it possible for the local administrative accept tones of milk with label containing only the word “school milk” and not having the name of manufacturer itself.
When the politicians will do the thing for the people with the heart and think of the public more than themselves? When the merchant will stop being greedy? When will people stop being selfish? So when the corruption will come to an end?

Now Thai people see the corruption as a normal thing. Do you think it is right to think that way? The Officials from the top of the Thai hierarchy until local officers are all related to the corruption. There are so many corruptions occur. Therefore it might be the reason to make us use to it. But for me, it is not an excuse for us to just sit down and accept it. So what is the point of having the Anti- Corruption Commission and the court? And we, as the citizen, why we just be a watch dog for our society, our lives, our future and our children? We cannot just bow you head down and accept the fate that our advantages are taken away by those we have chosen (Politicians). It is time for us to help each other to stop the corrupted politicians and greedy merchants. Dare to fight for the right thing.