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
Figure 20 - Primary expenditure and student: teacher ratios by province wealth
quartiles
Primary Expenditure Per Pupil and Student:
Teacher R atio by Province W ealth Q uartiles
25.00
20.00
15.00
10.00
5.00
0.00
lowest 2 3 highest Total
Province W ealth Q uartiles
Student/Teacher Ratio Expenditure (1000's)
e. Other resource allocation patterns are more wealth neutral by comparison. The
allocation of teachers among regions was examined to show relationships to
relative wealth. Those comparisons are shown in Figure 21 below. The student
teacher ratios for secondary levels are virtually equal across the regions, while
there are substantial relative wealth among them. There is a bit more variation in
the primary level student/teacher ratios, particularly between the northern and
southern regions, with approximately 20:1 and slightly over 25:1 respectively.
While significant in terms of financial implications, differences of this magnitude
in class sizes are not likely to be important in educational terms. It is clear from
Figure 21 that teacher allocation patterns are neither equalizing nor disequalizing
relative to regional wealth.
f. Equality of educational opportunity can also be reflected in the performance of
the students or schools. In the absence of a national standardized achievement
testing program, it is not possible to compare achievement among schools or
provinces. However, the rate at which students successfully move up the levels of
the educational system is a rough but meaningful indicator of the distribution of
educational opportunity, not in terms of resources, but in terms of performance. It
is therefore of some use to examine a comparison of transition rates across
provinces in the similar way as with resource allocation. For these purposes the
transition rates for lower and upper secondary were chosen. Such a comparison is
likely to reflect variations in educational opportunity, since the transition rates
overall from primary to lower secondary are quite high, but there is a substantial
drop off from lower to upper secondary. Thus there is less likely to be substantial
variation among provinces in primary-lower secondary transition rates. But larger
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