Last year, the schools - which badly needed improvement for their more than 4.5 million students - accounted for half of the 30,010 educational institutions assessed in the first round of countrywide evaluations.

Somwang Pitiyanuwat, director of the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (Onesqa), said yesterday that 123 schools - some providing multiple levels of education - had been inspected so far.

Divided by educational levels, 97 out of 113 pre-schools, 53 out of 68 primary schools, 41 out of 51 primary-secondary schools, and four out of seven secondary schools had received a passing grade, while most substandard schools were small primary schools in rural provinces.

Some of these poor-standard schools were those that had failed base assessments and were tagged "comatose" in the first round, Somwang said.

From this recent development of the second-round quality examination, the major shortcomings were in the vision and leadership of school administrators and the academic performance and analytical thinking of students.

Onesqa will compare the results of both series to see if the schools have made progress, especially those 560 "comatose" ones from the first round, Songwang said. "I believe the results will be shocking."