Education authority cites ‘focal points’ to improve Thai education system

The director of the Institute for Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST) said the unfavourable report by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed areas where improvement was necessary and could be achieved.
In IPST’s latest report, an article titled “What the PISA scores are telling us?” said the scores of schoolchildren in Bangkok were actually similar to their peers in the United States, though youth in the rest of Thailand got low scores. 
This indicates that the education model at Bangkok schools is successful, but it has not spread to other parts of Thailand. If this model can spread, the quality of students would certainly elevate, the article said. 
Studies show that schools with economically and socially inferior students will also have inferior teachers and learning materials compared to schools with well-to-do students. 
This unfair allocation of resources is key to educational inequity and has affected overall student achievement. 
Citing success in countries such as Finland, the article said principals of schools with economic and social inferiority had as much or even more educational resources than schools with economic and social superiority. 
To improve the quality of teachers, Thailand should learn from other countries. Education isn’t just about students, teachers and the curriculum, but also about the environment, society and culture, the article said. 
The article also urged people to consider different aspects of teaching, including:
How other countries pay teachers in comparison to other professionals with the same qualifications? How are degree certificates or diplomas compared in job recruitment? Do parents want their children to become teachers? How much attention does the media and the public give to education? What does society put first; victory of athletes or victory of academic contestants? Do parents urge children to study hard? 
If these questions get positive answers, then the overhaul of Thai education will not be too far, the article said. 
The article also cited “bottom line findings” by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Pearson’s Education to offer five key lessons to policymakers:
 There are no magic bullets: Throwing money at schools rarely produces results and individual changes to education systems rarely do much on their own. Education requires long-term, coherent and focused system-wide attention to achieve improvement.
 Respect teachers: Good teachers are essential to high-quality education. Finding and retaining them is not necessarily a question of high pay. Instead, teachers need to be treated as the valuable professionals that they are, not as technicians in a huge, educational machine.
 Culture can be changed: The cultural assumptions and values surrounding an education system do more to support or undermine it. Using the positive elements of this culture and, where necessary, seeking to change the negative ones, are important to promoting successful outcomes. 
 Parents are neither impediments to nor saviours of education: Parents want their children to have a good education; parents’ pressure for change should not be seen as a sign of hostility but as an indication of something possibly amiss in the provision. Parental input and choice do not constitute a panacea. Education systems should strive to keep parents informed and work with them.
 Educate for the future, not just the present: Education systems need to consider what skills today’s students will need in future and teach accordingly.
The article also concluded that Thai education could be as good as any other country, although such high-quality education only exists in Bangkok. Hence if it spread to the rest of the Thailand, it could result in higher academic achievement. 
Recent PISA scores pointed out weak points in Thai education that must be improved, such as the quality of teachers, resources and educational equity/justice, while urging that many factors must be considered and adjusted to achieve excellence.