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"School administrators from Laos expressed their desire to connect with Thailand to improve their students' education after they learned about the quality of international education in this country," said Piramol Charoenpao, executive director of Department of Export Promotion's Trade Fair Activities.

"They initially want advisers from Thailand to help them improve their school's quality. They also requested for an exchange of students, teachers and curriculum," she said.

The event opened at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre yesterday and closes tomorrow. It aims to promote the country's international education market to parents and businessmen from here and neighbouring countries.

Piramol said the next step would probably be transforming the school in Laos into an international school.

An association advising a school in Vietnam is interested in sending students here to undertake short courses in vocations such as dressmaking, massage and cooking.

"The association's representatives also told me they will disseminate information on Thailand's international courses and curriculum to recommend students there," she said.

More than 2,000 people, mostly locals, attended the exhibition on the first day of the event, as she had expected. Other visitors were from China, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Thailand boasts 361 international education institutions. With more than 26,000 students coming to study each year and more than 70,000 Thai students remaining in the country to take international programmes, the industry generates almost Bt100 billion yearly for the country, said Rachane Potjanasuntorn, directorgeneral of the Department of Export Promotion.

Perat Bangsakun, a 22yearold student, said he came to take a look around because he wanted to get an undergraduate degree from an international university in Thailand and found four interesting choices.

"We've just arrived and we've already got lots of very helpful information. This is really good," said Cameron Macky, 38, a language teacher seeking an international school with a kindergarten for his daughter.

Chanuantong Tanasugarn, deputy dean of international relations in Mahidol University's Faculty of Graduate Studies, said her university was very famous among international students for its public health, tropical medicine and population programmes.

As Mahidol hopes to increase its intake of international students by 5070 per cent in the future, the university has sent its teachers to jointly teach students in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam, which is a strategy to attract foreigners to study at Mahidol, she added.

by Wannapa Phetdee

The Nation