Darunee Fund 
for Education in Asia
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for Education in Asia
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Children's Situation in Thailand From the August 1999 Education for
Development Newsletter - Translated from Thai Children’s
quality is one of the characteristics to show the development of
each country because children will be the next generation to lead
the country. In previous years, the review of Thai government’s policy on children could not succeed in developing children’s life, family and society. The government could control only the number of population. Even though the education’s policy was wide and provided many useful things but still wasting at primary level. In fact at primary level, there were many responsible organizations ,but they were not well organized to work together. At the same time full facilities were not provided to all primary schools all over the country, but only in Bangkok and in big city. The government could not control the standardization of every primary school. Nowadays each school emphasizes only the curriculum at the compulsory education (grade1- grade 6) level, the government lacks of the evaluation of student’s development.
Actually, Thai government has given the most significant
attention toward Thai new generation as we can see from the
highest investment in education, the average cost of which is
about 9,000 baht / person/year
Thai government has spent lots of budget on this education, but after looking at the impact of the education, we found quite a lot number of underprivileged children. In 1997, we found some children in the age group of 3-5 years were sent to lower standard institutions such as the orphanage institution and children development center. The schooling children only 9/10 have enrolled at primary level. Children in the city and rural areas have inequitable chance to education, those in the city got more chance than in rural areas. The research has shown that it is because of the unequal of family income. As we know, only 2/5 of primary students got opportunity to study higher than primary level. And only 1/20 of the total number of high school students can afford to go to university. As we look at Thai’s society, it seems that the society gives an importance to university level more than primary level. In fact, education at primary level should be most important for children development. Thai government has planned for the expansion of compulsory education from 6 years to 9 or 12 years, but this plan has not been fully implemented because of insufficient budget. After the review of facilities toward children and youths, we can evaluate that it’s state only in the big city but not covered all in rural areas. The government knows the problems but still cannot solve all of them and never asks private sector to involve in the solutions In Thailand, there are various organizations to work on children and youths but all of them proceed the activities by social work concept not for development. These kinds of organizations are not obviously found in the rural areas. So far, Thailand cannot see a clear picture on children development as long as we do not get together by all organizations both in government and private sectors to plan for children development. source The report on review of Thai children and youth with family in Thailand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Minsai
Center Darunee Newsletter 16 Article |