For years now, students and teachers have been lamenting how the Thai educational system has been putting too much emphasis on learning by rote.
For just as long, people have also been complaining about how these examinations favour students who remember the most from their textbooks.
Therefore, academics decided that test questions should be re-designed to nudge students more toward analytical thinking.
According to the National Institute of Educational Testing Service (NIETS) director Dr Uthumporn Jamornmann, a select group of university lecturers and teachers spent five to six months improving questions for the latest round of the Ordinary National Educational Test (Onet). And Uthumporn insists that this new style is great.
"Our test questions can check not just the students' academic knowledge, but also their ability to reason, analyse and synthesise information," she said, adding that she stands by this belief even though students who sat the Onet on February 20 and 21 have been flooding the Internet with complaints.
"It's nonsense," one student said on a web board.
On the same website, another student challenged the NIETS to disclose the Onet questions and answers to the public. "Why don't all you PhD-holders take this Onet without opening your textbooks? I want to know how much you will score?" she added.
Under the Arts section, students were asked questions like:
What colour is the symbol of love?
a Black
b Red
c Pink
d White
In another section, students were asked to choose one of the following for a foreign couple that is visiting Thailand to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
Flowers: lotus, dandelion, jasmine, rose, orchid, marigold, tuberose, summer damask rose, golden shower, yellow cotton silk.
Food items: Seafood fried rice, rice with snapper, rice with seafood, rice with snakehead fish in chilli paste, phad thai with shrimp, noodles served in gravy with squid, rice with oyster, rice with omelette stuffed with mince pork, crab fried rice.
Colour of the tablecloth: reddish orange, sky blue, green, red, black, pink, yellow, grey, blue and dark brown.
Though people have been attacking NIETS for questions such as these, Uthumporn insists they were all well designed and entirely based on the curriculum.
In fact, NIETS has also posted an explanation on its website saying that these questions are in accordance with the 2007 curriculum.
According to the students though, most schools still follow the 2001 curriculum.
In a recent televised interview, Chulalongkorn University lecturer Sompong Jitradub said these "new style" questions had come too soon.
"To test the students' analysis skills, students should be taught to analyse information for two or three years before such questions are posed in tests," Sompong said. He also admitted that he was not sure if he would be able to give correct answers when posed with some of the latest Onet questions.
However, regardless of what people are saying, Uthumporn insists that the NIETS would not change its style for Onet.
"Had our children been familiar with such test questions and trained to exercise their analysis skills a few decades ago, our country would not be suffering from the red-yellow division like today," she quipped.
Chularat Saengpassa
