Excerpt from the Minister of Education’s Policies
The ultimate goal of the current Minister of Education’s policies is to increase Thai students’ performance and achievements in key subject areas measured in the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. For this purpose, the following eight policies will be implemented.
1. Reform the whole learning system, including the curriculum, pedagogy, evaluation and assessment methods, the university admission system, assessment and career paths within the teaching profession, and assessment of educational institutions, so as to improve students’ critical thinking ability, self-learning ability and problem-solving skills.
2. Reform the current system of teacher training and development to ensure that Thailand will have sufficient qualified teachers, and to ensure that teachers will be assessed and promoted in line with their successes in improving students’ performance and achievements.
3. Accelerate the use of ICTs, including tablets, as tools to develop teaching pedagogy, learning content, learning standards, evaluation and assessment standards, and to promote lifelong learning in Thai society.
4. Raise the quality of vocational education to meet domestic needs as well as international standards by working closely with the private sector in implementing the Thai Vocational Qualifications Framework, and by promoting the dual education system to improve students’ knowledge, skills, employability, career paths, remuneration, and to increase the proportion of students in the vocational and general streams to 50:50.
5. Encourage higher education institutions to emphasise quality rather than quantity development, and research and development of innovations and technologies through mechanisms such as performance-based budget allocations, and using university rankings as a guideline in developing the quality and standards of Thai universities in comparison with acknowledged world-class universities.
6. Promote public private partnerships and encourage all stakeholders to participate more in educational provision and support, from curriculum design to practicum support beyond the dual education system. This will assist to focus the public sector’s role more on supporting the private sector, and on development and control of overall quality and standards of education.
7. Increase and promote access to quality educational services for Thai citizens of all age groups, in particular the underprivileged, through several mechanisms, including income contingent loans, to improve access to and quality of higher education, and to produce graduates to meet domestic needs in line with the original intent of the income contingent loans programme.
8. Improve education access and quality in the southernmost provinces of Thailand by developing educational institutions in line with local economic imperatives and the socio-cultural identity of local people, emphasising increasing security and morale of students, teachers and educational personnel.
These policies will be implemented through the following strategies:
1) Accelerating the establishment of the Institute for Educational Technologies as specified by law to increase access to educational resources and to further develop educational technologies;
2) Establishing an Institute for Curriculum Research and Pedagogy Development to carry on the task of developing and increasing the body of knowledge, and pedagogical innovation and standards, on a continuous basis;
3) Improving current ways of measuring, assessing, and monitoring students’ performance to develop appropriate indicators to assess the overall quality and standards of Thai education;
4) Accelerating amendment of the Higher Education Act to guarantee the academic freedom and social responsibility of higher education institutions; and
5) Maximizing the management and utilization of resources for education, and increasing the efficiency of all relevant agencies.