Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

2.25 The quality of education also remains a key concern. Even though innovative
methods of learning such as distance learning, student-centered rather than teachercentered
learning, as well as work apprenticeship have been experimented with, and mass
education through satellite relays envisaged, these are exceptions rather than the rule. In
addition these are mere techniques that may not translate into inspired curricula or
learning processes. Rote learning is pervasive even in the best schools, and innovative
forms of learning are confined only to small segments. Vocational schools lack
equipment and teachers lack motivation. Moreover the improper targeting of
beneficiaries has led to problems of regional disparity, inequality of access, and
inefficient resource use.
2.26 The initial path of import substitution that Thailand pursued required little upgrading
of the skills and capabilities of the general workforce. Industrial promotion favored the
use of imported capital, and the indigenous labor utilized was mainly unskilled. The
reversal of policy in the 1970s towards export promotion further depended on the
country’s vast supply of low-cost labor, largely with low education.
2.27 The need to equip the workforce with upgraded skills as well as capability in science
and technology had hitherto not been felt and was not a political agenda. For a problem to
achieve the exalted state of a political agenda, a plaintiff is required. Unlike
unemployment or inflation where people are directly affected and votes can be linked to
policy success, problems with the quality of education (like a current-account deficit)
produces no obvious victims.
2.28 Today the ability of the labor force to adapt to rapidly changing conditions of work
and skill requirements has become ever more crucial as technologically-sophisticated
sectors play a more and more prominent role and as the crisis takes its toll in further
downsizing of government agencies and corporations alike.
2.29 Even before the crisis, educational institutions were in general ill-equipped to deal
with the nation’s manpower needs. Constraints were felt both in terms of resources to
keep up with advances in knowledge and maintenance of modern facilities, and in terms
of retaining quality staff. The high cost of operating and keeping up with new
technologies (new equipment, materials, and so on) and the much higher salaries for
selected personnel in private industry during the boom years competed away qualified
staff, and added to the difficulty of educational institutions in producing adequate
manpower supplies, especially in science and technology. Inadequate research and
development activity limits the nation's access to discoveries, technology and innovations
developed everywhere in the world. This constrained the country's ability to adapt
technologies, to draw upon and assimilate the world's scientific and technological
resources, to support new productive activities, upgrade existing techniques, and
accumulate the kind of knowledge that leads to sustained increases in productivity and
international competitiveness.
2.30 Such capability is essential for the process of drawing upon indigenous knowledge
and use of local materials, processes, and know-how. Because educational institutions
were not able to produce an adequate supply of researchers and scientists, the ability to
build up an expanding capacity for R&D within the institutions as well as in industry was
limited.
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