Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

penalizes the children in rural schools, unless these families incur substantial additional
costs to attend the better-quality urban schools right from the primary level.
3.6 Among the reasons why the least-advantaged groups invest less in the education of
their children are market conditions that work against the poor and perhaps also the
limitations on employment opportunities imposed by societal stratification and
entrenched networks of information and contacts. Only in the formal labor market,
particularly in the public sector and the larger private firms, are there clear returns to
education. Thus, if the prospect of gaining employment in the formal sector is believed to
be low, many of the poor rural families would opt for no schooling beyond the primary
level because of the high cost and low perceived returns.
3.7 This situation compounds the problem of inequity since low education begets low
incomes. The inter-generational perpetuation of inequality is likely to accelerate in the
future as production technology becomes increasing more complex and as employment
shifts increasingly out of agriculture and into industry. In the process the demand for
educated workers would no doubt increase and their wages would be driven upward
relative to those with less education.
3.8 Various studies also show that a large number of siblings also depresses the chances
of a child continuing on to secondary school (for example, Chalongphob et. al., 1988).
This finding brings out the link between fertility and the demand for education that has
been found in other countries. High fertility tends to be associated with low-income rural
households, and the link to low educational attainment can be seen as a segment in the
well-known vicious circle.
3.9 In addition, even when remaining in school and educational opportunities are
available, children from poor families do not perform as well as other children. High
birth-order has been found to have an independent negative effect on school performance
and possibly the ability to learn (Sirilaksana, 1986). The main causes of drop-out and
repetition of grades were found to be poverty, malnutrition, illness and absenteeism. This
situation exacerbates the problems of unequal access, low continuation rates, and low
income among rural households.
3.10 Chalongphob (1988) found, among those denied access to secondary education, the
first entry into the labor market is predominantly as unpaid family workers, working on
the family farm or household enterprise. As these individuals get older, some become
employees in the private and public sector, but by far the majority of those with lower
primary education remain in the family enterprise (farm and non-farm) either as heads of
that enterprise (thereby changing status into own-account workers) or as unpaid family
workers. Since the income of own-account workers are on average much lower than other
types of workers in the economy, the gap in incomes between those with primary
education and better-educated groups has been widening.
3.11 The overall pattern of employment indicates that workers with mere primary
education are more than proportionately found in segments of the economy that are less
prosperous and less progressive. In particular, agriculture has been, and still is, the main
employer of those with primary education. Unfortunately, this is the sector which by far
has the lowest value added per head. The large differential between the share of
employment in agriculture and the share of agriculture in GDP indicates a high degree of
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