Basic Education Commission secretary general Pornnipa Limpaphayom said the ministry had submitted its proposal asking for Bt200 million budget to build science classes in the commission's 167 leading secondary schools nationwide and that she had learned that the Cabinet would consider this proposal earlier next month.

This idea was brought up, after the Bt4 billion proposal to have four regional branches of the government's first science school, Mahidol Wittayanusorn School, was rejected by the Cabinet requesting for a more economic way to do it, she said.

Thus the ministry opted to open science classes in leading secondary schools to select students excelled in sciences to be assisted in becoming scientists instead, she said, the scheme would take in the wellprepared schools such as those with existing special classes so the ministry could just allocate some fund to improve their teaching materials and classrooms.

Each science class - which would applied curriculum taught at Mahidol Wittayanusorn School - would have about 40 students and the commission would allocate a yearly budget to the students at Bt10,000 per head, meaning that a school would received the fund of Bt400,000 per year, she said adding that the budget allocation would be done in one big chunk to cover for a class of the students from Mathayom 4 to Mathayom 6.

If this project got the Cabinet's approval, it would be implemented in the next academic year (2007) and the scheme would help producing 20,000 science students in the first year for the country, which was cheaper than building more Mahidol Wittayanusorn School branches upcountry, she added.

The Nation