Decentralise education
Published: 1/04/2011 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: News
Thailand urgently needs education reform. No question about that. But education reform remains elusive when the Education Ministry continues with a system that strengthens the rich and weakens the poor.
The ministry's crucial role in perpetuating social disparity is evident from its policy to close down small schools in rural areas. Parents are crying foul but education authorities remain unmoved. Last week, the Office of the Basic Education Commission firmly announced it would go ahead with the controversial policy.
According to Obec secretary-general Chinnapat Bhumirat, there are 14,397 small primary schools in the country. That is just too many, he said. When scarce budgets are stretched to serve too many small units, the result is inefficiency, shortage of teachers, lack of modern teaching media, and poor education quality.
The Obec answer is to move students to bigger schools so the budgets can be used more efficiently. That is why the commission plans to close down 5,627 schools, or 30% of all small primary schools within the next two years.
Instead of blaming small schools' inefficiency, the commission should review its policy which gives rise to this small school phenomenon.
The first thing Obec must do is listen to the parents' complaints, which are similar nationwide. Instead of empowering their youth to contribute to local development, the schools have drained the communities of future human resources by making the children look down on their parents, local roots and culture, and leave their homes. This is because the curriculum makes rural students look for success the Bangkok way.
To achieve this dream, they need to excel in the Bangkok-centric curriculum. Local and experiential knowledge are dismissed. Given this academic push, parents feel the need to send their children to district or city schools, resulting in declining numbers of pupils in the villages. Those who do not are either too poor or simply do not want to lose their children to city ways.
Meanwhile, most rural students cannot compete with their city peers and get stuck in low-end jobs and burning frustrations. Yet they cannot return home because they have lost the skill to earn a living at home.
How to turn things around? It pays to learn from the struggles of small schools to return the children to the communities. Take Wat Tha Sathon Primary School in Nakhon Si Thammarat, for example. The school was closed down in 2004, forcing pupils to navigate rugged terrain through a swamp forest to attend another school eight kilometres away. The parents then decided to revive the old school by making it community-run and financed by a community savings fund.
At Wat Tha Sathon, the curriculum links academic subjects with local content. The elders chip in as teachers to bring the children back to local roots, history, craftsmanship and first-hand knowledge about their natural surroundings. The pupils who want to pursue higher education leave with a strong sense of community belonging and commitment. Those who want to stay and work in the village have the skills to do so.
Instead of closing down small schools, the commission should let the locals take over, give them the support they need and not let them struggle on their own like Wat Tha Sathon. Education decentralisation is the way to go forward in education reform. The commission should pave the way towards change.
Sadly, the top-down decision to close down small rural schools shows that Obec itself is a big part of the problem.
Source - The Bangkok Post
Comment: Think the last sentence sums it up well.
