The move came after the local administrative bodies offered to provide a budget for academic support and for hiring contract teachers where necessary.

"The local administrative organisations have drawn up an interesting proposal," Deputy Education Minister Rung Kaewdaeng said yesterday. Currently, the Education Ministry is in the process of transferring 83 schools to the local administrative bodies.

With the current limit still in place, 292 other schools are on a waiting list to be transferred.

Until yesterday, the transfer limit prescribed a maximum quota of three schools for each provincial administrative organisation, two for each experienced municipality and just one for each municipality without experience in educational services.

Rung said the local administrative bodies, if proven qualified, could now take over as many schools as they wished from the waiting list except the royally-initiated schools. All other types of special schools, such as lab schools under the government's One District One Dream School, are now eligible for transfer.

Rung said a joint committee, comprising representatives from various authorities, would verify the local administrative bodies' qualifications.

He said the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment would evaluate the quality of schools that were with the local administrative bodies for one full academic year.

"If the evaluation shows their quality drops, the schools will be transferred back to the Education Ministry," he said.