The latest survey ranked Thai students near the bottom among Asian countries in terms of competitiveness, only slightly better than Indonesia. We aren't in a position to compete with children from Singapore, Malaysia, Japan or South Korea.

Did this piece of news excite any of our political leaders? Did it spark a call for a review of the much-heralded education reform that has been touted from the very first day that Thaksin Shinawatra took office five years ago?

Education Minister Chaturon Chaisang didn't sound like he saw a real crisis at the national level. He admitted that the country's education standards left much to be desired. Despite the nine-year compulsory-education policy, he said 60 per cent of the population only completed the primary level or lower.

Of course, the minister does understand how serious the issue is. But like most education ministers before him, Chaturon seems resigned to the fact that he alone cannot move mountains. The total lack of political will to tackle the deep-rooted education malaise has put the whole country's future at risk.

To begin with, budget allocation at the Education Ministry is a wasteful, unproductive and politically driven exercise right from the start. Regardless of the vast differences in standards, requirements and disbursement capacity, all schools in all regions of the Kingdom receive their annual budget based on the number of students, each of whom is allocated an equal share. The inevitable result is the more equal the distribution, the more unequal the quality of education.

That's certainly not news to most officials in charge of education policy. Instead, it's a well-known crisis that has defied solution all along. The Education Ministry receives a sizeable chunk of the national budget; the problem is not quantitative. In fact, other ministries could point their fingers at the Education Ministry for its high financial endowment.

But as critics have already pointed out, the money is never spent where it's needed the most. Some analysts suggest that the ratio of efficiency is in the vicinity of 20 per cent at best.

Can there be any doubt then that when our children are pitted against those in neighbouring countries, they feel increasingly like losers? And once that sense of pride and confidence becomes thoroughly trampled on often enough, we risk approaching the mentality of a failed state.

The crux of the problem lies in the fact that almost 80 per cent of the country's budget set aside for "education" goes to administrative costs - 15-17 per cent to teachers' salaries and the rest to construction and the purchase of hardware. Only 3.5 per cent is devoted to actual educational development.

The real scandal, of course, is the politicisation of the education budget. Politicians tamper with teachers' salary scales often and with great enthusiasm - not so much out of concern for the welfare of the teachers as to use the budget as a bargaining tool to win their votes in the next election. Teachers play political games with vote-seeking politicians instead of striving to improve their professionalism.

When teachers are more concerned about catching up with the politicians who hold the purse-strings than they are with the deteriorating condition of their students' brains, we have a national crisis on our hands. And what's worse, we still don't know what's to be done about this calamity. Or if we think we do know the cure, we still don't see anyone capable of taking on the task.

Suthichai Yoon