Asia Times: Thailand fails its children



	August 17, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Thailand fails its children
By Teena Gill

BANGKOK - A recent study suggesting large numbers of children in Thailand have dropped out of school due to the Asian economic crisis has sparked off a major controversy between government and international agencies.

Educational experts say the debate is prompting a national look at the entire education system, which they feel is heavily biased against schooling for poorer and, in particular, girl students.

According to the study, which began in 1995 and was carried out by the government's Office of the National Education Commission (ONEC), close to 400,000 children have dropped out of primary schools in the last 1997-98 academic year alone due to the economic crisis.

Though primary education in Thailand is compulsory and in theory free, in reality families end up paying large costs towards uniforms, school books, transportation and meals. For many parents this is unaffordable.

The ONEC figures have been strongly contested by the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESBD), the government planning agency. According to the agency, the survey was hastily compiled. It says its own findings, based on ''more reliable'' socio-economic surveys conducted by the National Statistical Office, show opposite results. The NESDB's conclusion, which took some by surprise, is that there has been a marked improvement in the number of children attending school since the economic crisis.

''We (at ONEC) are professionals,'' retorted the ONEC chief Dr Rung Kaewdaeng, in response to the accusations. ''Therefore we have no interest in the work of some amateurs who know nothing about education.''

One interesting conclusion that seems to have emerged from the debate is that it is not so much the economic crisis which has caused dropouts to increase dramatically, but existing gaps in the education system itself - perhaps exacerbated by the economic crisis.

High dropout rates, say experts, existed since well before the economic crisis. ''Around one out of every four children between the ages of 6 and 17 is not in school,'' and this has been the trend for a while, say Peter Brimble and Gary Suwannarat of the Asian Development Bank in a recent report. While at present roughly 15 percent of primary school students do not complete their schooling, this figure was no less than 12.3 before the crisis, ONEC says.

Though no breakdown of figures has been made public, many of the children being pulled out of school are thought to be girls. This is because of prevailing patriarchal values which value education of boys more than that of girls.

In a recent paper on women and economic liberalization in the Asia-Pacific region presented in Bangkok, Dr Jayati Ghosh of the Center of Economic Studies and Planning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi says the crisis in the region will have a serious long-term impact on the education of girls, who are being forced to drop out in large numbers and take up home-based jobs to boost earnings.

''One of the primary coping mechanisms for households is [to] pull children out of school, either to work in the informal sector, or to work at home, allowing adults to work. There are reports in some countries that children are being pulled out of school because there is not enough money to buy lunch,'' says a recent World Bank report titled Education in East Asia.

''Old cultural values have still not changed,'' says Acharn Bupa Wattanapun of the Education Department at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand. ''If parents must choose, they would prefer to send their sons to school. They feel that girls don't need education as they will get married and raise families.''

Such values persist despite the fact that as many women work in Thailand as men - in fact in 1996 women made up 52.2 percent of the labor force.

There are structural barriers to girls' education also. For example while primary level schools exist right across the country, down to the provincial and village level, secondary schools are usually located in the provinces' main towns. If girls want to continue their education they must become boarders, a prospect which not many Thai parents fancy, preferring to take them out of school instead. ''Parents feel girls might get out of their control and go astray,'' says Wattanapun.

The high rate of dropouts is evident from the fact that Thailand has among the lowest levels of secondary school enrolments in the region, comparing poorly with the other Southeast Asian ''tiger'' economies.

While in Singapore and Malaysia, for example, almost 60 percent of children attend secondary school, in Thailand only 37.5 percent do. In South Korea both primary and secondary school enrolment are 100 percent.

The big question that worries many social analysts is whether the dropout rate is here to stay. More than three million workers have lost their jobs since the economic crisis began in mid-1997, most of them women. Another 2.1 million are underemployed and living below the official poverty line, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.

''Assuming that each worker is supporting one child in school, there will be 5.1 million children at risk,'' says Fida Shah of UNICEF Thailand. According to him, the dropout rate in the future could be far larger than now. Unfortunately while government agencies continue to squabble over numbers, few concrete measures have been taken to address the issue.

A small step however has been the special ''expanded opportunity schools'', where students from poor homes are given free tuition and text books and some financial assistance. Some 600,000 children are estimated to have benefited from the scheme.

But experts argue that given the government's failure to address Thailand's abysmal educational record and private business's lack of concern, only a major shift in national attitudes will be able to pull Thailand out of its present educational mess.

(Panos Features)

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©1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

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