Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

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Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony. Cresswell: Educational Finance UNESCO-PROAP TA 2996-THA Education Management and Finance Study July 1999 a.1. How are funds allocated in relation to the goals of the Government? a.2. How are funds allocated in relation to the government units responsible for their use? a.3. How are the funds used in terms of the types of goods and services purchased? Arranging and reporting the budget information to answer these separate questions results in a number of distinctive formats and budget structures. It also results in a problem common to virtually all government budget systems: a major difficulty in linking information about finances to the government’s plans and policy goals on one hand and actual government operations on the other. b. Budget and policy decisions and government plans express goals and directions. Budget information linked to the goals of the Government, for education or any other area, is organized into two types of related classifications: programs and functions. Programs are usually large categories or sectors of activities that all are intended to achieve a major goal, such as providing primary education services to the population. The basic program structure of the national budget is shown in the categories or sectors in Table 3. To provide more detailed information, each sector is divided into sub-sectors and specific programs. The education program structure includes seven sub-sectors, and a total of 27 separate programs. (The current sub-sector and program structure for the education budget is found in Appendix 8). The total budget allocated or expended in these program areas can be found in the standard budget documents and reports. c. There is no systematic relationship, however, between the sub-sectors or program categories and the organization of Government agencies. For example, there are single programs for primary school administration, primary school service, and primary school quality improvement. However responsibility for the operation of government primary schools fall under different units: the Office of the National Primary Education Commission (ONPEC) in the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of the Interior, and the Bangkok Municipal Authority. Within the Ministry of Education, the operation and administration of schools fall under several separate departments. The same principle applies to higher education, and most of the other program categories. d. To complicate the matter even further, the Government has also adopted an alternative category structure to reflect the various goals of activities. These are the so-called functional categories used by the United Nations (found in Appendix 8). This scheme employs 14 major groups of activities (or programs), collected into four major groups: General Government Services, Community and Social Services (which includes Education), Economic Services, and Miscellaneous. These 14 groups are very similar to the 12 programs shown in Table 3. As a result, program-type reports and publications of Government finance may not be fully consistent, depending on which program classification scheme is used. e. Budget analysis also includes concern for how funds are spent in terms of the objects of expenditure, i.e., the specific kinds of goods and services purchased. This analysis is concerned primarily with the efficiency and effectiveness of the 42
Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony. Cresswell: Educational Finance UNESCO-PROAP TA 2996-THA Education Management and Finance Study July 1999 mix of resources purchased with government funds. Therefore the budget requires a category structure which reflects the various objects of expenditure, and how they are linked back to both the goals (programs) and responsible administrative agents or government units. f. Thus to examine how actual operations and expenditure of funds map onto programs and goals, it is necessary to establish linkages across many layers of information and organizational boundaries. The existing government accounting structure does provide a way to code and organize budget information in a way to establish some of these linkages. The conceptual structure of the accounting system shows how levels of coding can provide a basis for linkages across the various levels and programs. f.1. Program Structure (Sector, sub-sector, program, sub-program, task/project) f.2. Functional Area/Economic Classification (12 categories) f.3. Work Plan (A=administration; B=Service; C=Quality Improvement, etc.) f.4. Organization Account (capital or current, object of expenditure, salary, etc.) g. This accounting structure provides the conceptual basis and raw information for potentially answering most of the analysis and management questions referred to above. However, there do not appear to be adequate organizational capacity or arrangements at the national level to employ this information as effectively as possible. As a result there is a plethora of inconsistent formats and budget reports, and considerable difficulty in obtaining financial or other management-related information in a form useful for many kinds of management or policy analyses. There does not appear to be a mechanism in place at the national level to coordinate educational finance statistics, establish standards for analysis and reporting, or otherwise exercise authority over critical educational information. Instead, authority and responsibility for analysis and reporting educational finance and related information is shared in various ways across the Ministry of Education, the ONEC, the NESDB, the Budget Bureau, and other ministries with education and/or training programs. This problem is discussed in more detail in the section on management information systems and resources. 2.1.4. The education budget process Decision making for education budgets occurs by distinctive processes at different levels of the educational system. Because the education system is rather highly centralized at present, much of the important decision making takes place within the national level. But there does exist important financial decision making discretion at the provincial levels, and at local schools and higher education institutions. Therefore a comprehensive review of the budget process is necessary to explore the linkages among the levels, and to explore the way actions at one level affect the others. For this review administrators at the various levels of the government were interviewed concerning budget practices, and detailed budget information was collected from a number of government agencies and local schools. Additional budget process information was obtained from budget documents and studies of the process, especially Senarith (1995). 43
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mission and operations. The term
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The information requirements for fi
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Table 1: Continued Dept. Flow of Re
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Table 1: Continued Dept. Flow of Re
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Description and assessment of compu
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Table 3: Existing computer systems
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Table 3: Continued Current existing
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Description of flows of financial i
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(teachers, facilities, etc) if data
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Table 4: Continued. Content of curr
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Table 5: Assessment of information
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An assessment of information system
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general administration, these syste
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Recommendation for IS Most involved
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6. The nation wide implementation.
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References Office of the permanent
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Office of private education commiss
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Interviews 10 September 1998, 9:00-
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Appendix 2 Projections of Costs of
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Projected Cost Increases for Expand
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Identification of Schools for Sampl
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8. Please place an X in a box below
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enrollment as a whole growing at an
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Figure 1: Thailand’s Development
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Table 5: Crude transition rates of
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and level of education, 1993 and 19
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2.31 Questionable quality of educat
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income inequality between agricultu
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4.1.4. The percentages calculated f
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Table 11: Public and Private sector
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4.3.8. As would be expected, unempl
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5.7 The dilemma is to balance the s
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Table 14: Unemployment and Underemp
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there any activities that would be
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References Chalongphob Sussangkarn
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Appendix 6 BMA Voucher Policy A. Lo
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Appendix 7 Finance Allocation Metho
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Appendix 8 Program Structure of the
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Not all possible flows are show, si
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Appendix 11 Results of Regression A
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