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. The current process departs from past patterns in important ways, and the Bureau of the Budget is introducing procedures to make the decision-making process more collaborative with the ministries. At the beginning of the cycle the Bureau of the Budget (BOB) receives the basic framework (targets and ceilings) and any special expenditure controls for the new budget from the Prime Minister and other top government officials. The BOB then works with a ministry to calculate what is referred to as a "fixed cost budget," which represents the base of contractual obligations and other commitments over which there is little discretionary control. It also includes what are considered basic operations, and the funds sufficient to maintain these operations. c. The BOB will introduces any new policy constraints and targets at earlier stage in the process. Once the fixed cost budget is set, the parties can negotiate new programs and adjustment to be added/removed. This interactive process works from the "fixed cost" base through requests for additional funds and programs, up to the eventual budget proposal. BOB is also attempting to initiate a program of working more closely with ministries to hold hearings to set budget ceilings in a more open process. 5.2.1 Strengths of the budget process a. The budget processes appear to be functional and successful in many important respects, and suffer from flaws and weaknesses in others. The main aspects of functionality and success are: a.1. That the process is well understood and reasonably transparent. a.2. It is timely and effective in producing the necessary decisions when required. a.3. It helps establish a basis for sound administration by providing stable and predictable resource flows. a.4. It provides a basis for participation in and review of decisions. a.5. It provides a basis to control the flows and expenditure purposes for coordination with government policies and programs. b. At each level and agency of the system, administrators and staff were well aware of the mechanics of the budget process, could produce and explain budget documents and decisions, and were knowledgeable about budget administration, reporting, and controls. 5.2.2. Problems in the budget process A number of important problems with the budget process were identified as well: a. Central Control - Budget decision making is viewed as too strongly influenced by the Budget Bureau and the resulting budget as too rigid and restrictive. b. Excessive Budget Rigidity - The budget imposes too many restrictions on management at lower levels: the so-called “line item” problem. Shifts of resources can require BOB approval. Such rigidity causes inefficiencies. c. Incremental Decision-Making – The large amounts of budget detail limit the opportunity for comprehensive analysis and review is limited, resulting in a largely incremental approach. 4
Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony. Cresswell: Educational Finance UNESCO-PROAP TA 2996-THA Education Management and Finance Study July 1999 d. Teacher Allocation – This allocation is influenced by the salary budget for new teachers, but also strongly influenced by other decisions at provincial and lower levels. Official guidelines cannot always be met due to insufficient numbers of teachers in particular subjects or transfers following initial assignments. 6 Government Expenditure Issues 6.1 Financial allocation across levels of education a. The results of the review show large differences between the per cent of the budget allocated to each level and their enrollments. Pre-primary and primary education represent almost two-thirds of the enrollments, but receive less than half of the allocated budget. Similarly, general academic secondary education’s share of the budget is less than half the size of its share of the overall enrollment. By contrast, the university level receives a proportion of the budget almost double its share of enrollment. The unit cost for baccalaureate level education for example is almost six times that for secondary education. Unit expenditure estimates for primary education are over 10 % higher than for secondary education, a reversal of the typical pattern. By comparison, secondary education costs per pupil in Malaysia run about 1.6 times those for primary. These ratios are quite different from what is found in developed countries where the ratio of unit expenditure on higher to secondary education is usually no more than 3:1. b. The primary beneficiaries of the high levels of subsidy to higher education appear to be the higher income students and households. University students in general come disproportionately from the higher socioeconomic levels of society. This generalization does appear to apply to Thailand. Substantially higher family incomes characterize the students in baccalaureate study compared to the other levels of education. Overall, the indication is clear that the high levels of support for higher education cannot be justified on equity grounds, except perhaps for those students attending one of the open universities. 6.2. Expenditure across budget categories a. The review of allocations by budget categories shows some imbalances. There are larger proportions of salary expense for the lower levels, which must be accounted for by higher proportion of staff. The overall student-teacher ratios for the secondary public schools represents an over 50 % higher staffing ratio for the lower level, which easily accounts for the budget differences. By contrast, the proportion of salary expense for higher education appears to be lower than would be expected in comparison to other higher education systems. This could be a result of a preponderance of lower-ranking faculty. For example, MUA figures show 50 % of staff at the rank of lecturer and less than 2 % at the rank of professor. b. The proportion of capital expenditure in the higher education level is also above what might be expected. Some of the increase may be caused by the enrollment increases from 491,956 in 1991 to over 1.1 million in 1997. By comparison, 5
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: Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony.
Page 63 and 64:
Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony.
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
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

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?