Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

general administration, these systems could help the school manage their service
effectively. In addition, if the data can be linked or transferred automatically, the burden
of data reporting will be greatly reduced. Finally, the national MIS database can be
formed.
Analysis of gaps and information needs for finance analysis and decision making.
Data from interviews can be summarized as follows:
1. Time Overlapping. Budget allocation is undertaken in December annually. For example,
in December 1998, each organization is required to submit plan of budget allocation
request fiscal year 2000. Even though an official deadline to report 1998 educational
statistics is on the 10 th of June, the most up-to-date complete data available is that of
1997, because the educational data of 1998 will not be completely collected prior to
December 1998. So the enrollment figures for each educational year used to calculate the
budget of per head is usually 2 years behind the current fiscal year. This overlapped
figure can affect budget allocations. When the number of students is more than that of the
calculation for allocating budget, the budget per head is low, and a student would get
subsidies lower than the standard criterion. That directly affects the quality of education
services. When the number of students is smaller than that of the calculation, the budget
will be cut down to the minimum requirement. If the use the current statistic data is
required by the decision maker, an estimate of the current data will be undertaken.
2. Budget Ceiling. Planning for educational management should include a needs
assessment of target groups. This should include current conditions and problems.
Resource needs, both public and private, should be taken into consideration in order to
adjust the budget plans regularly and appropriately. In theory, adequate information is
necessary for improving the budget allocation, but sometimes, the way to determine the
budget ceiling is based on the previous year allocation. So the rate of budget increase in
every plan is quite nearly the same, such an across-the-board increases of 10% of the
previous year. It is necessary to analyze budget, rate of expending budget changes in
each year, as well as the rate of budget distribution across the plans, tasks, or projects in
order to allocate budget compatible with the actual practice. The use of the previous
budget ceiling should be changed into analysis of expenditure by plans, tasks, and
projects to allocate budget for the next fiscal year.
The result of activities undertaken should be considered in adjusting budget plans,
but this raises two issues. Firstly, a requests to adjust budget plans are rarely approved
from the BOB, which seems to have negative effects on undertaking activities. Secondly,
in order to get a budget adjustment, the request must be based on the approved plans even
though the activities may be different from the plan.
3. Timeliness It takes time to get a financial permit from the organization to the
Comptrollers Office because the process needs to be checked and rechecked. the process
implies that the information for checking is not systematically available. This delay
affects the expenditure and all activities undertaken in various levels. In addition, if it is
near the end of fiscal year, most organizations do not have enough time and information
to operate activities effectively according to the budget plans.
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