The Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007 showed that Thailand's gross enrolment ratio in pre-primary education rose from just 43 per cent in 1991 to 93 per cent in 2004.

"Almost 100 per cent of five-year-olds in the country participate in pre-schools, kindergartens and child-care centres," the report said.

It added that about 90 per cent of four-year-olds and 22 per cent of three-year-olds were enrolled in these institutes.

This fifth edition of the EFA Global Monitoring Report assesses progress towards the first EFA goal, which calls upon countries to expand and improve comprehensive early childhood care and education (ECCE), especially for the most disadvantaged children. Such interventions are crucial to improving children's present well-being and future development.

Other goals include universal primary education, gender parity in education, improving levels of adult literacy and educational quality.

Regarding the ECCE, the latest report by Unesco recognised Thailand's effort in establishing 67,200 pre-school classes in 29,410 rural primary schools for more than 1.4 million children each year during the last several years.

While pre-primary teachers' starting salaries were lower than gross domestic product per capita, their ending salaries increased by nearly threefold.

The report said many government agencies other than the Education Ministry also helped in the work for the ECCE programmes, including the Local Administration Department, the Health Department, and the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security.

According to the report, Thai parents actively played a role in the early childhood care and education programme in various stages: collaboration in starting, assisting and developing the programmes, management and administration of schools and centres, as well as making toys, equipment and other materials - or furnishing of centres.

However, the report noted that more improvements were still needed.

For example, it recommended the launch of a public-information campaign to make people aware of the importance of the ECCE - and pointed out that local communities and rural areas have limited resources to establish quality programmes for the ECCE.

The Thai government earmarked at least one quarter of its budget for education.

While the gross enrolment ratio in primary education dropped by 1 per cent from 1991 to 97 per cent in 2004, the ratio in secondary education rose significantly from 31 per cent in 1991 to 73 per cent in 2004.

For tertiary education, the ratio jumped from 32 per cent in 1999 to 43 per cent in 2006. Years spent attending school stood at 12.4 in 2004, from just 8.7 in 1991.

Between 2001 and 2004, the country's youth literacy rate (15-24 years) was at 98 per cent while the adult literacy rate (everyone over 15 years) was 93 per cent.

Moreover, Thailand boasted a high level of gender parity in education.

The Education for All movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, youths and adults. The movement was launched at the World Conference on Education for All in 1990.

Ten years later, with many countries far from having reached this goal, the international community met again in Dakar, Senegal and affirmed their commitment to achieving Education for All by the year 2015.

They identified six key education goals which aim to meet the learning needs of all children, youths and adults by 2015.