Use teacher placement policies as a tool to reduce inequities in
the education system by targeting shortage areas.
In order to make the education system more equitable, Thailand should
take steps towards ensuring that all students are taught by highly qualified
and high-quality teachers. As a first step, the government should evaluate
the impact of its current scholarship and incentive programmes to determine
whether they are effectively filling regional and subject shortage areas.
Based on this information, Thailand could modify existing policies or
introduce new ones to attract teachers to harder-to-staff schools and
subjects. For example, depending on the results of the evaluation, Thailand
may wish to put more funding towards attracting students from poorer
regions of the country to become teachers or to expand accelerated
promotion opportunities to teachers in more regions of the country. As a
priority, sufficient financial incentives should be provided to all teachers in
high-risk regions of the country (e.g. districts in the south).