Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

Final Report, Volume II/3 Anthony. Cresswell: Educational Finance UNESCO-PROAP TA 2996-THA
Education Management and Finance Study July 1999
Table 4 - Education expenditure by level, 1998
Total
(Million Baht)
Per Cent of
Budget
Per Cent of
Enrollment*
LEVEL
Primary and Pre-Primary 89,113.1 44.2% 60.6%
Secondary 50,311.6 24.9% 28.6%
Academic 34,261.3 17.0% 40.3%
Vocational 14,559.6 7.2% 4.8%
Other 1,490.7 0.7%
Higher Education 33,986.1 16.8% 10.8%
University 32,159.8 15.9% 8.1%
Non-Degree 227.7 0.1% 2.7%
Other 1,598.5 0.8%
Services not defined y Level 2,940.9 1.5%
Ed. Affairs not elsewhere classified 20,633.6 10.2%
Misc. 4,722.3 2.3%
TOTAL 201,707.6
*Enrollment from most recent year available, 1996-97 (OECD Project Report) 12
b. The allocation of financial resources across levels shown in Table 4 suggests a
discrepancy between the plans and priorities of the Government and the actual
budget decisions. This is suggested by the fairly large differences between the
per cent of the budget allocated to each level and their enrollments. Preprimary
and primary education represent almost two-thirds of the enrollments,
but receive less than half of the allocated budget. Similarly, general academic
secondary education’s share of the budget is less than half the size of its share
of the overall enrollment. By contrast, the university level receives a
proportion of the budget almost double its share of enrollment. Of course these
differences can be accounted for in part by the different unit costs typically
associated with education at the various levels. University education is
generally assumed to be more expensive than lower levels, and vocational
more expensive per head than academic secondary education. This same
pattern is found in the per pupil estimates by level shown in Table 5 below.
These differences are even larger in some comparisons than the overall budget
amounts. The unit cost for baccalaureate level education for example is almost
six times that for secondary education. Another unusual ratio is that for
primary education, over 10 per cent higher than for secondary education, a
reversal of the typical pattern. By comparison, secondary education costs per
pupil in Malaysia run about 1.6 times those for primary (Maaris and Kuslan,
1997).
12 The enrollment data from the OECD Project Report include approximately 2.7 million students not
allocated by level, which are not included in Table 4 since it was not possible to ascertain an appropriate
placement for them.
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