THAILAND

Before entering upper secondary school, students choose between a "general" (or academic) curriculum at a high school and a vocational curriculum at a vocational college. On successful completion of upper secondary school, those who have opted for a "general" curriculum seek a place at a university, while those who have opted for the vocational curriculum either enter the job market as skilled workers or proceed to vocational or technical colleges to improve their qualifications. While it is possible, in principle, to switch from a vocational curriculum to a general curriculum, due to complex administrative and other technicalities, such instances are very rare.

The Education Reform of 1977 abolished national examinations conducted by the Ministry of Education at the end of each of the three school levels of primary, lower secondary and upper secondary. In its place, individual schools introduced examinations that were either administered internally by each school or in clusters of local schools.

Till 1977, entrance to public universities was controlled by a common university entrance examination held in April. However, in a bid to provide universities with greater flexibility and autonomy in the selection of their students, as well as to relieve candidates of the intense pressure of examinations, a new selection procedure that allocates only a proportion of places by examination and the rest on the basis of residence in "catchment" areas is currently being put into effect.

In 1997, a new formula for selection to public sector schools has been introduced by the Ministry of Education. According to the new formulation, which takes into account whether the school is located in Bangkok or in the provinces and whether the school is oversubscribed or not, entrance by examination to lower or upper secondary schools (grades 7 and 10 or MS 1 and MS 4 respectively) will constitute between 10-30% of the total intake, while the majority of applicants (40-60%) are to be admitted if they live in the catchment areas and have acceptable school-leaving results. A further 10% of seats are be reserved for children gifted in sports, art or music and a "special quota" of 10% is to be reserved for children of "patrons" of the school.

The Ministry of Education directive only applies to secondary schools in the public sector. Private schools remain free to determine their own methods of selection.

At the end of the three years of lower and three years of upper secondary schooling (MS 3 or grade 9 and MS 6 or grade 12 respectively) locally administered examinations are held by schools. Since Thailand has a local instead of a national system of assessment, it is difficult to judge with any accuracy the national level of student achievement in secondary schools. The examination results show great variability in regional results. On the whole, schools in Bangkok perform the best, followed by those in the provincial towns. The poorest results come from the rural areas.

Figure 9 : Thai National Educational System
(To view figure, please download Acrobat.)

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