Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony. Cresswell: Educational Finance UNESCO-PROAP TA 2996-THA Education Management and Finance Study July 1999 b. Moving the financing of staff salaries from the central to the local level will require a gradual transition period. One approach to this would be to phase in the transition over a five-year period. The employment of the staff would shift from the central to the local level in the first year, but with staff retaining full civil service rights and salary levels. During that period, the block grant would consist of two components. The first would be the non-salary component of the basic support level. The other would be a salary portion to cover the salary obligations for the existing staff (benefits such as pensions would continue to be funded at the national level). In the first year, the salary component would cover the full salary obligation of the existing staff in each school. In each subsequent year, the salary component of the basic grant would be reduced by 20 per cent, and the non-salary component would be increased by an amount equal to 20 per cent of the salary budget the school would have if all it’s teachers were paid at the average for that type of school. For schools with a relatively high seniority, high salary staff, this shift would result in a slow decrease in the budget available for salaries, and require the local school to either raise more local revenues or use staff in more efficient ways. For institutions with relatively low seniority, low salary staff, the shift would slowly increase the salary funds available, allowing those schools to improve programs or compete for higher seniority teachers. When an institution loses staff during this period, through retirement or other attrition, the salary component of the block grant would be reduced by the amount of the staff salary, and the non-salary component would be increased by the average amount described above. c. Over such a phase-in period, the local institutions would have ample opportunity to plan for staff changes and shifting resources to adjust to the budget changes. With normal staff turn-over and careful planning, the extent of the disruption or negative impact on institutions or individual staff should be kept to a minimum. However in some local areas the existing staffing patterns may be such that the phase-in process causes serious problems. To deal with this contingency, the phase-in period should include a special budget allocation for a staff adjustment fund at each province. If administrators in a local institution need short term financial assistance to manage the transition period, they would apply to the provincial education office for a temporary allocation from this fund. The fund would be available for the five-year phase-in period, but would expire at end of that time period. 3.2.2.3 Appropriate expenditure and cost sharing levels a. In developing a method for determining appropriate expenditure levels the recommendations presented here deliberately avoid the use of a cross-sectional production function or historically based calculation of what are usually called “unit costs”. Of course, any block grant or student count-driven approach to educational finance requires a way of setting per-student amounts or guidelines. In the current policy-making setting for educational finance in Thailand, this is commonly referred to as the “unit cost” issue. In these recommendations, however, it is referred to instead as the issue of per-student amounts or guidelines. This is done to emphasize the distinction between a policy decision on per-student amounts that is based on a mix of analytical and political factors versus a true 92
Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony. Cresswell: Educational Finance UNESCO-PROAP TA 2996-THA Education Management and Finance Study July 1999 “unit cost” determination that would be based on some empirical analysis of the full range of factor costs for the operation of educational programs, i.e., a production function style of analysis. In the first instance, the empirical basis for such a unit cost analysis is not available and has not been used in the past (although in principle it could be). What is currently used as a “unit cost” calculation is based on a relatively crude and highly aggregated combination of past central government expenditures. More importantly, the results of this current approach represent little more than an historical artifact. The same would be true of a typical production function type of analysis in the Thai setting. That is, the data on which such an analysis would be based are the results of a long-term history of administrative decisions, not influenced by competitive pressures or attempts to optimize productivity. Moreover, the variation in input levels across regions and levels of schools would mean any single “unit cost” figure would represent only one point, and an arbitrary one at that, in what is sure to be a wide distribution of per-student expenditure patterns. b. In the finance system recommended here, per-student amounts are critically important. They will determine the overall amounts of education expenditures, and will strongly influence both quality and equity in the system. Thus these perstudent amounts are central educational policies. As such they should be the focus of policy debate and be based on present priorities and goals for the future, not locked into the history of past allocations made under a different system. At the same time, the amounts must be realistic and feasible given the existing financial and institutional constraints in the government. Therefore a per-student amount determination involves a mix of technical and political issues. The political issues are matters of national goals and education priorities, not of financial analysis, and so are taken up in this review. The technical issues include how to estimate appropriate guidelines for these per-student amounts, and how to employ the guidelines in allocation decision making. 3.2.2.4. Student accounting and reporting a. The current methods of accounting for students in schools and classrooms must be revised to provide more accurate and reliable data. The official number of students in each school is currently taken to be the reported enrollment in the annual June data collection time period. Using a single annual student count provides no financial incentives for teachers or administrators to maintain attendance levels at other times in the year. Moreover, in- and out-migration of students can substantially change a school’s true attendance during the course of a school year. In addition, there are persistent reports of so-called “ghost students” who appear on enrollment reports but do not attend, artificially inflating the schools apparent need for resources. It is difficult to evaluate such reports without a large number of site visits to individual classrooms, which were not undertaken as part of this review. These factors all suggest that the current enrollment data does not accurately reflect the actual numbers of students in classrooms on a dayto-day basis. It is this latter number that represents the school level demand for resources that should be the basis for allocation decisions. Therefore enrollment as currently construed should not be the basis for financial allocations as described here. 93
Page 1 and 2:
- Volume II/3 - Educational Finance
Page 3 and 4:
Table of Contents A. Executive Summ
Page 5 and 6:
Table of Tables Table 1 Adjustments
Page 7 and 8:
Figure 18 Figure 19 Figure 20 Figur
Page 9 and 10:
Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony.
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50: Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony.
Page 99: Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony.
Page 123 and 124: mission and operations. The term
Page 125 and 126: The information requirements for fi
Page 127 and 128: Table 1: Continued Dept. Flow of Re
Page 129 and 130: Table 1: Continued Dept. Flow of Re
Page 131 and 132: Description and assessment of compu
Page 133 and 134: Table 3: Existing computer systems
Page 135 and 136: Table 3: Continued Current existing
Page 137 and 138: Description of flows of financial i
Page 139 and 140: (teachers, facilities, etc) if data
Page 141 and 142: Table 4: Continued. Content of curr
Page 143 and 144: Table 5: Assessment of information
Page 145 and 146: An assessment of information system
Page 147 and 148: general administration, these syste
Page 149 and 150: Recommendation for IS Most involved
Page 151 and 152:
6. The nation wide implementation.
Page 153 and 154:
References Office of the permanent
Page 155 and 156:
Office of private education commiss
Page 157 and 158:
Interviews 10 September 1998, 9:00-
Page 159 and 160:
Appendix 2 Projections of Costs of
Page 161 and 162:
Projected Cost Increases for Expand
Page 163 and 164:
Identification of Schools for Sampl
Page 165 and 166:
8. Please place an X in a box below
Page 167 and 168:
enrollment as a whole growing at an
Page 169 and 170:
Figure 1: Thailand’s Development
Page 171 and 172:
Table 5: Crude transition rates of
Page 173 and 174:
and level of education, 1993 and 19
Page 175 and 176:
2.31 Questionable quality of educat
Page 177 and 178:
income inequality between agricultu
Page 179 and 180:
4.1.4. The percentages calculated f
Page 181 and 182:
Table 11: Public and Private sector
Page 183 and 184:
4.3.8. As would be expected, unempl
Page 185 and 186:
5.7 The dilemma is to balance the s
Page 187 and 188:
Table 14: Unemployment and Underemp
Page 189 and 190:
there any activities that would be
Page 191 and 192:
References Chalongphob Sussangkarn
Page 193 and 194:
Appendix 6 BMA Voucher Policy A. Lo
Page 195 and 196:
Appendix 7 Finance Allocation Metho
Page 197 and 198:
Appendix 8 Program Structure of the
Page 199 and 200:
Not all possible flows are show, si
Page 201 and 202:
Appendix 11 Results of Regression A
show all

Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?