Address of H.E.Mr. Pongpol Adireksarn, Minister of Education
at the Global Associates: International Business Development Program
on October 28, 2002 at 9.00 – 10.30 hrs.
at Sheraton Grand Sukhumvit Hotel, Bangkok
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President of Global Associates, Dr.Dan Kasta,
Director of SEAMEO Secretariat, Dr.Arief S. Sadiman,
Director of SEAMEO RIHED, Dr.Padoongchart Suwannawongse,
Distinguished speakers and participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very honored and pleased to be invited to speak at this Global Associates Meeting. As Minister of Education and Minister in charge of Higher Education of Thailand, I am deeply interested in partnership and collaboration with regional and global organizations and networks in the field of education.
All of us are aware of the impact of technological changes and globalization in information, trade, and industry which have direct as well as indirect bearings on the demands of education and skill development at all levels. For this reason, I am particularly interested to know that SEAMEO RIHED and the SEAMEO Secretariat have taken the initiative to seek partnership with Global Associates, an international network of colleges and universities with rich experiences in a wide range of educational and technical programs.
I understand that you would like me to speak on the current trends in educational reforms in Thailand. In particular, you have asked me to focus on:
a) the current and future needs of primary and secondary education in Thailand,
b) the needs for teachers and teacher training programs in Thailand, and
c) how universities which are members of Global Associates might assist in the programs.
Therefore, I will try to confine my talk today on these three areas. This will take about 30 minutes and after that I will be very pleased to exchange views and answer some questions that any of you might want to ask.
a) Current and future needs of primary/secondary education in Thailand
I want to begin by projecting Thailand’s development vision for the next 20 years. This vision focuses on alleviation of poverty and upgrading the quality of life of the people, and to move towards a sustainable and balanced society, a society which is knowledge-based, life-long learning, as well as caring and spiritually strong, a society that is able to cope with the rapidly changing needs and future challenges of the nation and the world.
Obviously, such a vision needs the support of a long-term national policy that emphasizes quality human development.
According to our new Constitution (1997), every Thai citizen is ensured equal right to at least 12 years of basic education which is to be provided by the state free of charge, and with good quality. Following the constitutional mandate, the 1999 National Education Act provides a framework for the reform of basic education and higher education. Basic education will be composed of nine years of compulsory education and three years of further education prior to higher education.
Having been appointed Minister of Education, I now took the direct responsibility of implementing the education reform plan. I announced the following policy which I call “ Panja Patiroop” (Five-thronged Reform). Actually the five emphases of education reform were already outlined in the National Education Act. They are:
1) reform of educational structure,
2) reform of learning,
3) reform of education administration and services,
4) reform of teachers and educational administrators,
5) reform of resources.
My policy will follow the above reform framework but will zero in on the following points:
1) Structural Reform
There are five principle elements on which I want to put particular emphasis, in the reform of educational structure in Thailand:
a) Lifelong education. For Thailand to become a “Learning Society”, we need to integrate all forms of learning: in-school, out-of-school, and informal learning, so as to prepare people of all ages for self-paced and self-motivated learning throughout life. The problem is how to have a flexible transfer system so that in-school, out-of school, and informal,
as well as lifelong learning, can be related and linked together to form a flexible yet continuous base for a person’s pursuit of knowledge and development of skills throughout life.
For example, for those learners who opt out of the formal system after compulsory education to work and study informally may later want to return to the formal system, therefore, it is necessary to establish an accreditation and transfer system that is flexible enough so that learning from experiential practices can be counted towards learning achievements.
b) Basic education. To me, basic education comprises early childhood education, compulsory education which is now legalized as 9 years instead of 6 years as before, and special education particularly education for those who need special programs of learning, such as the physically and mentally handicapped, the socially disadvantaged, and the specially talented. As of 2001, gross enrolment in pre-primary education reached 95% of age group; while enrolment in primary level was 103.2% for age group. However, enrolment at lower secondary was 69.7% and upper secondary was 57.3%. Therefore, admittedly, there is a big issue of quality and equity in basic education related to many factors that also need seriously considered in the reform processes.
c) Vocational education. This type of education has been given a new emphasis in our education reform. Obviously, it needs to be restructured in order to respond to the new demands and to meet new challenges in vocational techniques, technology trends, and globalized industry.
d) Higher education. This level of education also needs to be overhauled since the expansion of basic education to 12-year education for all will certainly lead to greater demands of higher education and hence, the needs for massification and diversification of higher education in the future.
e) Partnership and linkages. We all agree on the principle that all sectors in society need to be mobilized as partners in education. However, various quality and effective partnership and cooperating models need to be further developed and promoted throughout the country taking into consideration the diverse situations of localities.
2) Reform of Learning. Here again, I emphasize five important points, namely :
a) promote learning to the full potentials of each individual learner,
b) link all the learning contents in the various levels of school curricula from 0-20 years, to foster life-long learning and provide the foundation for quality living in a democratic society,
c) promote action-research by teachers to continuously improve teaching-learning processes at the school and classroom levels,
d) make use of all kinds of learning resource centers,
e) diversify the methodology for the evaluation of learning outputs and outcomes, and promote increased opportunity for entering higher levels of education.
3) Reform of Educational Administration and Services.
On this aspect of reform, I pinpoint the following important issues in my policy:
a) centralize policy making, standardization, support in resource allocation and investment, as well as monitoring and evaluation,
b) decentralize educational administration and management to the educational service districts and to education institutions. Immediately after I took office, I officially announced the launching of 175 educational service districts in all parts of the country. This may not meet with the expectation and satisfaction of all parties concerned but I believe that we will have to start with something that is immediately implementable and later, if necessary, further adjustments can be made.
c) mobilize the participation of local educational communities and individuals concerned in the management of educational institutions,
d) promote private education,
e) ensure that quality assurance is an integral part of school administration.
4) Reform of Teachers and Educational Personnel.
This is, as all of you are definitely well aware, the most difficult reform of all, since it involves about 600,000 personnel in the Ministry’s workforce. The total teaching force up to grade 12, is about 562,247 (in 2001). The remainders are educational personnel and administrators.
If we look at the overall teacher-student ratio in Thailand, which is on the average, about 20 students per teacher at the primary level, and 21 at the secondary level, then we may think that Thailand should have no difficulty. Yet, the teacher quality, pedagogy, and the methods of teaching-learning, pose serious problems for educational services of our country and have negative impacts on other aspects of reform. Therefore my policies on the teacher reform will highlight the following:
a) accelerate retraining of in-service teachers, using school-based training, research and development. Retraining must be continuous and long term,
b) promote successful models of teachers such as teacher masters, mentors etc., and encourage them to provide leadership in teacher reform networking,
c) reform pre-service teacher education, aiming at quality and balanced teachers as well as attracting top students to the teaching profession,
d) promote teachers’ status,
e) decentralize teacher personnel administration to educational service districts,
f) support teacher salary and remuneration suitable to professional standard,
g) mobilize the participation of local human resources in educational services.

5) Reform of Educational Resources
This is a very important aspect of education reform. I therefore emphasize three points in my policy:
a) mobilization of resources from all sectors of society. (To promote learning and to enable Thai society a truly” learning society”),
b) fair and equitable allocation and distribution of educational resource to ensure “education for all”,
c) improvement of efficiency and accountability of the utilization of educational resources.
Having outlined my policies on all aspects of reform, I don’t think I need to tell you in further details about the current and future needs of basic education and teacher development program in Thailand.
I hope you can now clearly see that our greatest needs are the needs for quality teachers, and quality and equity in education. However, I would just like to take a few minutes more to tell you what I think universities from the Global Associates might assist us in our educational reform endeavors.
First and foremost, I think you can help us promote better quality of what we teach in our 12-year basic education. Although there are eight core areas of studies of learning in the basic education curriculum, I want to emphasize, in particular, the teaching of English, Science and Mathematics. How do we know what we are teaching in our school are of international standards? How can you help us linking with up-to-date knowledge sources, including knowledge accessible to related websites in these three subjects.
My next, but equally serious concern, is about who are teaching these subjects. Again I certainly believe the Global Associates Network can assist us in the retraining and improvement of our teachers. However, we must emphasize the use of school-base training and action-research to ensure that the schools and students will directly benefit from the program.
My last point is how to ensure quality and effective teaching and learning. Most importantly is how best should we assess the teachers’ and students’ outcome. I believe the members of the Global Associates will be able to contribute significantly to this issue.
I now come to the end of my presentation, and will be happy to answer your questions.

Thank you.
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