Mixed hope for Education Reforms

Originally published at AsianCorrespondent.com on Friday 13th May 2016

As schools across Thailand prepare to reopen next week for a new academic year, the question of how the country’s proposed educational reforms might impact student learning is once again the focus of attention.

Weaknesses in Thailand’s education system are well documented, with the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking Thailand 50^th of 65 nations,reports from the World Bank concluding that one-third of 15-year-old Thais are ‘functionally illiterate’, and year after year ofdisastrous O-NET results, in which averages rarely break 50 percent, all indicating that Thailand’s education system is in a state of emergency. These failings have been acknowledged by educators, academics, rival politicians and Thailand’s current leadership who made education a central point in their Reform Road Map,

A 2015 poll by the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), which concluded that education…