Alien children want multilingual, multiculture

"My research found most alien students in Tak province's Mae Sod district wanted to study Thai, together with English and their native languages,"said Premjai Vungsiriphisal, senior researcher at the Asian Research Centre for Mitigation at Chulalongkorn University's Institute of Asian Studies.

"They said studying several languages would enable them to communicate with other people in Thailand," she said in a research presentation at the office of the Education Council.

Between May and November last year, Premjai researched education for alien children - collecting information from 158 people, including children, their parents, teachers and staff of organisations informally educating the children at centres in the province.

She said Thai students also wanted to study languages of neighbouring countries, like Burmese. They reasoned it would be useful when they traded with them.

"These alien children want to study subjects that will be useful for their daily life, including mathematics and science as well as occupational training. Most also wanted to study in Thai schools because it would give them more chances to access higher educational levels"

Other interesting findings were that 40 per cent of respondents aged between 6 and 15 had never studied before moving to Thailand, and 48 per cent knew nothing about the Thai government's policy on educational opportunities.

Expense is the biggest obstacle for most wanting access to education— 49 per cent said cost was the barrier; 14 per cent said communication was a problem; and five per cent said they believed Thais did not want them to study in Thailand.

"Alien students should be educated in Thai culture .... together with their motherland's culture. It will help them adjust to living in both countries," Premjai said.

Another researcher, Chupinit Kesmanee from Srinakharinwirot University's Faculty of Education, said agencies needed to change their paradigm to provide multicultural and flexible education for alien children in Thailand.

He conducted a study comparing education management of indigenous children in Thailand and four other countries.

His presentation showed New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Malaysia provided special forms of education or particular organisations for such children. Thailand however had similar arrangements in the past, but no longer. New Zealand also focuses strongly on multicultural education.

Somkiat Chobphol, deputy secretarygeneral of the Basic Education Commission said around 100,000 alien or stateless students were studying at commission schools - out of some 400,000 inside and outside the education system.

"The commission and other organisations are drawing up Prime Minister's Office regulations to control the quality of informal education centres for stateless children. These centres must register with our educational service area offices, listing the number of children studying at the centres so they can be  funded to improve education quality, " Somkiat said.