Is small really beautiful? A call for a Buddhist 'middle path'

More than half of Thailand’s schools are considered small, which means they either have fewer than 120 students (Ministry of Education definition) or each class has fewer than 20 students (World Bank definition).

This is a concern for two reasons: empirical evidence suggests that such schools are low in quality and they are economically inefficient, creating an excessive amount of personnel expenses. 

With the lowest fertility rate of any OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) country, South Korea also has a problem with small schools. It had to close 3,600 small schools, one of which, in the village of Nogok, had only one student and cost US$86,000 (Bt3.34 million) a year to run.

In 2014, a Thai feature film called “Khitteung Withaya” (“Teacher’s Diary”) was released based on a true story about a rural Thai school with only four students.

The area with the highest number of small schools is the remote, disadvantaged Northeast. The three provinces with the highest number of small schools are Khon Kaen, Nakhon Ratchasima and Ubon Ratchathani.

Of course, the phenomenon of small schools is not new in the Thai education system. In the 1970s, researchers at the Office of the National Education Commission (ONEC) of the Prime Minister’s Office conducted a demographic study and anticipated that a significant drop in Thailand’s fertility rate would result in smaller schools.

Thailand’s currently low fertility rate of 1.51 (far below replacement) is the main cause of the small school problem.

With respect to the current situation, recent research done by myself and a Chinese scholar, Hui Bi, found a negative .31 correlation between the percentage of small schools in a province and the quality of education.

Even more serious are the economic inefficiencies associated with having so many small schools. Even though Thailand spends a high percentage of its national budget on education compared to most other nations (up to 25 per cent), much of these funds must go to personnel costs for basic education (72 per cent).

Thus, inadequate funds are available for quality improvements and for other educational priorities such as technical and vocational education and R&D, which could help Thailand become more competitive and escape the “middle income trap”.

What then must be done? Five policy alternatives can be considered:

The first option would be to continue the status quo and do nothing, which has been the operational policy for years and has adversely affected the quality of Thai education and the future of the nation.

The second option would be to do what South Korea did and close many small schools. This alternative is simply not acceptable in the Thai cultural context. For centuries, the school and/or the temple have been the heart of Thai villages and also serve as important community centres. Local politicians will rightly fight vigorously against this option, as will most of their rural constituents.

The third option would be to reinvigorate the idea of school clusters sharing resources. While this would certainly improve the situation, it fails to deal adequately with the basic problem.

The fourth option would be to consolidate small and large schools in non-isolated areas, an approach advocated by the World Bank in Thailand. Each village would still have its own school and great economic efficiencies would be realised, freeing up funds for key educational priorities such as quality improvements and/or more funds for higher and technical-vocational education. This would also solve the significant problem of smaller schools not having enough teachers to cover every class, which adversely affects quality.

While the fourth option is the most attractive economically from a benefit-cost perspective, it would doubtless be opposed by many parents and families in rural areas because of the dangers and inconveniences involved for their children, who would be forced to travel longer distances to and from school. Thailand ranks second in the world for traffic fatalities and many of these occur on narrow rural two-lane roads. They would have to use rot songteo (pickup trucks with two rows of seats and an open back, a common form of public transportation in rural areas), which are quite dangerous.

Also, travelling to another school not in one’s own community could have some adverse social and/or psychological effects as students attempt to adjust to a new environment.

The fifth option is to introduce actively multi-grade teaching to significantly reduce personnel costs and to avoid the need to close or consolidate schools. Numerous countries in the region, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, have used this approach effectively. 

Keith Lewin at the University of Sussex argues that multi-grade teaching is under-utilised and can improve both efficiency and quality across all schools. It can also stimulate greater use of student-centred learning, a key element of Thailand’s 1999 education reform.

Angela Little of the University of London has shown how this can be a viable and attractive option articulated in her important book, ‘Education for All and Multi-grade Teaching: Challenges and Opportunities (2006)’. 

Thus, the fifth option, the effective use of multi-grade teaching, would appear to have the most potential, but considerable training would be required. This is a kind of middle path solution would avoid the extremes of closing schools or staying the course with a highly inefficient low-quality system.

In many ways, Thailand’s tremendous success in reducing its fertility rate has created an important “demographic dividend” contributing to Thailand’s economic growth in recent decades. 

Now, however, the phenomenon of small schools presents a huge challenge to Thai educational policy-makers. Maintaining the status quo will seriously endanger Thailand’s long-term future. Radical change is imperative to improve the quality of Thai education, essential for the long-term future of the Kingdom.

 

Gerald W Fry, Distinguished International Professor 

College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota

gwf@umn.edu