While some students are paddling close to perfect, the country's overall educational quality is floating a long way offshore.
About 95 per cent of children in Thailand are in school, according to the 2010 Global Monitoring Report. However, quality education and the opportunity to gain a quality education are a concern among Thai educators, as was raised during the recent launch of the report at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
The annual education report is commissioned by Unesco and monitors and reports on the progress and challenges towards achieving Education for All (EFA).
EFA was launched in Thailand in 1990 with 164 countries jumping on the bandwagon. It sets goals for early childhood care and education, universal primary education, life skills and lifelong learning, literacy, gender equality in education, and quality education.
The commitment to provide quality EFA was renewed at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2000.
Piriya Pholphirul of the World Bank expressed satisfaction over the successful enrolment rate of students in Thailand, but stressed that this was not matched by the quality of education provided.
"PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] data show that quality has declined, particularly so for Thailand. Findings show that Thailand's quality of education has declined in comparison to other countries in this region such as [South] Korea."
Piriya, a human development economist, also voiced concern about how to connect the quality aspect of education to the labour market, competitiveness and long-term visions of a country.
Nantarat Charoenkhun, a lecturer in policy education, management and leadership at Chulalongkorn University, while lauding the progress made so far, said there was more that could be done.
"The most critical [issue] now is education opportunity and quality. I think for this, the government should focus more on supporting schemes for the disadvantaged, such as financing schemes, scholarships, grants, student loan schemes for higher education or post-graduate students."
Despite the 15-year compulsory, free education for all policy and scholarships from the government, the country faces several challenges.
Sivika Mektavatchaikul, deputy permanent secretary of the Education Ministry, commended countries' efforts towards achieving the EFA goals, but expressed scepticism, particularly for Goal 1 - "providing free and equal access to quality primary education".
"Thailand has been working on this for a long time, but 5 per cent of children are still not in school. The government tries to encourage [enrolment] by giving scholarships, but some children have to work with their parents in the field and the parents of some disabled children don't want them to go to school."
There is also the real danger that the education momentum build up over the past decade will stall, or be reversed by the current global economic crisis.
Assist Prof Kalaya Tingsabadh, vice president of Chulalongkorn University, said EFA might be achieved, perhaps in 50 years.
"I'm a little pessimistic because we're facing economic problems and many countries think of other things before education. It's important for Unesco to make every government understand that without EFA, each country will not sustain development.
"There are two aspects of EFA - numerical aspect and quality aspect. We can have the whole population receiving an education but it could be a poor education.
"It's much more difficult to give a quality education. Rural schools are struggling to employ quality teachers and provide a quality education.
"Once the numerical aspect is achieved, Unesco will have a much more difficult task to promote quality for all," she said.
The target year to achieve the EFA goals is 2015.