Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

Table 5: Crude transition rates of students continuing to next grade in general
education, by type of school and level of education.
1992 1993
Level of education Total Public Private Total Public Private
Primary
Primary 1 - - - - - -
Primary 2 88.6 89.5 82.1 85.7 85.8 84.4
Primary 3 97.6 97.7 97.0 91.3 90.6 97.6
Primary 4 98.3 98.3 98.2 91.2 90.4 98.6
Primary 5 99.0 99.1 98.1 92.9 92.9 98.2
Primary 6 97.0 96.8 98.8 90.1 89.2 99.0
Lower Secondary
Secondary 1 61.6 62.3 54.9 68.0 69.4 54.2
Secondary 2 97.1 97.2 96.1 97.0 97.0 97.7
Secondary 3 97.3 97.3 98.0 97.4 97.3 98.3
Upper Secondary
Secondary 4 44.7 47.6 23.3 46.7 49.6 23.6
Secondary 5 90.4 90.6 87.4 91.2 91.4 88.3
Secondary 6 90.0 90.6 81.9 90.3 90.8 83.1
Source: Education Statistics, 1993.
2.14 The improvement in the transition rate can be attributed to various measures that
have been undertaken to reduce the cost of school attendance, particularly in the
provincial areas. These include free schooling, school lunches, free uniforms and
textbooks, and the addition of secondary grades to several existing rural primary schools
with excess classroom and teacher capacity, increasing the geographic accessibility of
secondary schools to the rural population.
2.15 Higher incomes in general have also played a role. Continuation rates had always
been found to be lower among children from socially and economically disadvantaged
backgrounds. In 1988 about 88 per cent of the youths aged 12-14 were still in school in
the urban areas, whereas the corresponding figure for rural youths in the same age group
was a mere 68 per cent (NSO, 1988). Economic growth has helped to raise the
corresponding figures to 92 per cent and 75 per cent respectively in 1991 (NSO, 1993).
2.16 However some of this improvement is more apparent than real, and part of it was
due to the changing demographic situation. First, low secondary enrollment is common
where there is rapid expansion of primary enrollment, and transition rates tend to increase
at lower levels first as schooling becomes more universal. With expansion of primary
education stemming off in Thailand due to successful family planning, the pressure on
places in secondary schools has been eased. The crude transition ratio merely reflects the
ratio of the number of students in the next grade, compared with the students in the
preceding grade, and thus may reflect the changing demographics and/or new recruits
from those who had previously left school, and not continuation from the preceding
grade.
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