Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony. Cresswell: Educational Finance UNESCO-PROAP TA 2996-THA
Education Management and Finance Study July 1999
b. The result of this structure, for example, is that as many as eight different
agencies may operate lower secondary programs, only four of which are under the
Ministry of Education. The information on budgets, staff, and enrollments is
organized around the specific administrative processes and control needs of the
separate agencies. It is therefore not routinely or directly possible to assemble data
about lower secondary education overall. The same is true of other levels and
types of programs as well. As a result, there is a misalignment between the policy
level of decision and analysis, which is concerned with broad program areas, and
the administrative level, which is concerned with control, accounting, and
assessment only within it’s area of operation. There is also misalignment between
the information flows and the policy goals of the system. Information flows and
structures reflect maintenance and support of institutional structures and
processes; therefore describing how things work within the institutional structure
is comparatively easy and accurate. However to examine the impacts of the
education system or of policy decisions vis a vis goals or the client environment,
it is much more problematic. The goal of information system reform should be to
get the information structures and flows better designed to serve larger policy
goals and management issues.
c. The second administrative problem is lack of policy or administrative
mechanisms to control and coordinate information resources. In short, there is no
information resource management structure for the whole of education. There are
substantial information resources in the educational system. And many individual
agencies have done an excellent job of developing their own internal management
and analytical capability. The details of much of this development are discussed in
considerable detail in the Information Systems report in Appendix 1. However,
much of this development has taken place under the initiative of the separate
agencies, without an overall strategy or integrating authority. Thus the quality of
the resources within individual agencies does not contribute to solving the overall
problem of disintegrated information resources. It would appear that the ONEC is
in the position and has the potential resources to take on such a role. But the
policy structure and operational authority for the ONEC (or any other agency) to
engage in coordination and management of information resources do not exist.
d. There has been some progress in that direction, as reflected in the OECD pilot
project, which brings together data from many sources to fit the OECD indicators
framework. This is an excellent basis for further development and information
coordination initiatives. To continue this work, the Government should undertake
two major related initiatives. One is to formulate an educational information
policy, which provides the basis for common approaches to definitions, standards,
and management of information resources. The policy should include
specification of authority in one agency for the coordination and planning
functions. The same agency should have primary responsibility for educational
statistics structures, standards, reporting, and analysis. The second initiative is for
the Government to develop and institutionalize its capacity to generate educational
indicators routinely; develop Executive Information Systems for managers and
policy makers, and develop the capacity for data mining, and more extensive
electronic networking for the collection and dissemination of educational data.
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