Published on November 16, 2005

Decentralisation and education reform on hold until transfer mess sorted out. It is time the government stopped dithering about its planned transfer of government-run schools to local administrative bodies and makes up its collective mind firmly one way or another.

Whether officials will cave in to protesting teachers or follow through with decentralisation efforts, they will need to show temerity and make an unequivocal decision. Procrastination and delaying tactics will only lead to further confusion and turmoil.

Meanwhile, the reform of education will go nowhere.

How can one expect educational services for Thai children to improve if the government fails to lay down clear-cut policies and goals, much less implement much-needed reforms?

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration has announced contradictory decisions about the pending administrative transfer of schools.

On September 29 last year, then-education minister Adisai Bodharamik endorsed a ministerial regulation on how to appraise local administrative bodies’ readiness to take over schools from the Education Ministry – which the Cabinet duly rubber-stamped.

Yet the regulation barely had a chance to take effect, because the Cabinet proceeded to try and appease disgruntled teachers by issuing a Cabinet resolution on 14 December 2004 to suspend the transfer.

The move was widely interpreted as an electoral ploy by the government to win most of the 400,000 government teachers across the country over to its side before the general election on February 6, which Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party won in a landslide.

Many local administrative bodies have condemned the ruling party’s decision to backtrack on the planned transfer; they lodged a complaint with a provincial administrative court. The court ruled in favour of local administrative bodies on the grounds that the transfer plan was in line with decentralisation laws. The laws stipulate that the state must hand the supervision of schools over to local administrative bodies by 2009.

Accordingly, on August 30 the Cabinet issued another resolution to the effect that the transfer plan must go ahead as planned. More than 1,000 local administrative bodies have already submitted requests to take over state schools.

The requests will be approved if the applicants pass an evaluation test designed to determine their readiness to run the schools. Those that do pass the criteria will receive a sizeable portion of schools’ operating budgets and will gain administrative control over teachers.

But many teachers would have none of it. Tens of thousands of them nationwide have decried the plan and staged mass rallies in opposition.

In face of such serious opposition, the Cabinet changed track yet again. On November 8 it said that teachers would retain the right to decide whether to transfer to local administrative bodies.

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said even those teachers elected to be transferred to local administrative bodies could come back to the fold of the Education Ministry, if they realise that working for local authorities is not in their interest.

Then yesterday, Education Minister Chaturon Chaisang recommended that the transfer of a school to a local administrative body be permitted only on condition that the board of school administrators and teachers, as well as the school board (also made up of parents), agrees to the transfer.

Not surprisingly, critics have accused the government of handling the issue in too flippant a manner. They insist that the plan might have great implications for the country’s education system, and so the government’s decision should not be made on a whim.

Decentralisation laws incorporate educational services, and sooner or later the transfer of schools to local administrative bodies will have to take place.

How to do it? Clear-cut goals, well thought-out policies, effective measures and realistic timeframes will be needed.

Chularat Saengpassa

The Nation

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