MoE hands out mixed report on Thai schooling

Most are poor children, including abandoned hill tribe children living with HIV, and disabled children.

Office of the Education Council secretary general, Thongthong Chantharangsu said these children face learning problems, intellectual disabilities, seeing and hearing disorders, physical and health problems.

He said the agency conducted a report into the education of country children for the year 2007, collecting information from the ministries of Education, Culture, Tourism and Sports, Interior, Office of Prime Minister, and Social Development and Human Security.

The report found the rate of continuous learning [to programme completion] among all secondary school students was 83.7 percent of graduates in 2006, whereas the rate of continuous learning for high school students was 78.7 percent. Half studied in the academic programme and 28.1 per cent in the vocational programme.

The rate of continuous learning for diploma students was 17.5 per cent, and for university students 69.2 per cent.

The rate of students graduating from high school was 98.1 per cent, while for vocational programme students it was 79 percent.

The report found that 72.6 per cent of teachers at public and private schools held a bachelor degree and 13.2 per cent a masters degree.

Meanwhile, the proportion of teachers per student in the Ministry of Education was 20.9 to 1.