Thailand addresses challenges in education

Bangkok (VNA) – Thailand is exerting every effort to deal with difficulties in education and training as eight percent of the country’s labour force were evaluated to have professional skills compared to 35 percent of Singapore and 20 percent of Malaysia.

According to the latest report of the Thai Ministry of Education, Thailand ranks 55th out of the 60 countries and territories in an English proficiency survey, the lowest ranking in Southeast Asia.

Thai students have to struggle with learning English though it is not a compulsory subject from primary to secondary schools, while around 10 percent of GDP is sourced from tourism.

It is worrisome that nearly 2 million Thai children who are at the age of going to school have yet to be able to read and write. Furthermore, the dropout rate is very high, which has been existing for nearly two decades and regarded as the main reason to the low labour quality.

Thailand is working to evaluate the quality of teachers via students’ academic performance and equip students with necessary analysing, computer and foreign language skills, as well as encourage youngsters to attend vocational training courses.

The efforts are essential as the country is getting engaged in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) which is due to set up later this year. Along with financial and technological capacity, the quality of human resources constitutes a crucial factor in competition among ASEAN member states.-VNA