Education to seek cabinet nod for setting up offices

Meanwhile, private school teachers, saying the government assists only civil servants, vowed to stage a 50,000strong protest at the Education Ministry on March 18 if their complaints are ignored.

After presiding over a meeting of the Education Council yesterday, Jurin told reporters that the council agreed to set up 18 secondaryeducation area offices to administer staterun secondary schools, which have been  supervised by the 185 educational zone offices. The 18area grouping was based on the provincial administration regulation's provincial clusters.

This was a request by secondary schools, unhappy with theoverwhelming number of primary school representatives on each educational zone office's subpanel for teachers and education personnel. They claimed secondary schools feel they are not treated with fairness.

Jurin said the council assigned the Basic Education Commission (BEC) to formulate the plan's details for further consideration as to whether the new 18 area offices would sufficiently and efficiently administer the schools. To make way for the new area establishment, the National Education Act, the Administration of the Ministry of Education Act, and the Rules for Teachers and Educational Personnel Act have to be amended, he said. The Office of the Education Council has been assigned to draft the amendments within two weeks, when he will sign and submit them for Cabinet consideration, Jurin added.

BEC secretarygeneral Kasama Voravan na Ayudhya said that the idea behind the new offices was to reduce administrative problems and thus improve secondaryeducation quality. She said her office would submit the project details to the education minster next week.

Wittaya Boriboonsab, president of the Secondary School Association of Thailand, said the schools were happy with the new office idea, as it would allow them to work better and with more confidence while reducing or stopping more secondary schools from being transferred to local administrative organisations.  So far about 100 secondary schools have been transferred to the local bodies.

In a separate incident, Teacher Council member and president of the Private School Association in Lop Buri, Yeunyong Jiratthitikan, presided over a meeting of some 80 representatives of 76 private schools at the Education Ministry yesterday at which they agreed to submit a letter to Jurin and to the prime minister. They want all private school teachers to get the same accrediting amount (payment for a teacher's extra educational projects) as civil servant teachers. They also  want a Bt1,500 monthly living cost allowance for teachers earning less than Bt11,700 salary, he said. They also want the government to proceed on a pay rise of 6 per cent for 89,816 private school teachers from May 2008 to September 2009.

They want the government to give private school teachers the same pay hike the government aims to give civil servants and staterun schoolteachers with salaries under Bt15,000. They will wait for the government's response until March 10. If their demands are not met, 50,000 private school teachers will hold a protest in front of the ministry on March 18.