“Thailand Education Eco-System Blueprint” aims to elevate the standard of Thai Education

Nataphol Teepsuwan, Minister of Education, has announced plans to lead Thai education into a new era with a focus on developing a robust infrastructure to enhance human capital. Under the theme of “leaving no one behind”, the Thai Education To The Power of 2 (TE2S) education reform promotes excellence and sustainability. The academic capacity of students will be improved, teachers will be equipped with 21st century skills and the concept of learning will become more flexible in order to fulfill the Education Eco-System.  Through this approach, a plan has been structured to unlock, change and widen education to ensure human capital is strengthened for Thailand’s future.

“The 21st century has presented itself as an era where growth in knowledge is rapidly changing at an exponential rate. Consequently, the global supply of skilled-labor becomes more competitive in order to meet new expectations. Hence, the need for individuals to become adaptive in a fast-paced environment becomes critical. The problem is straightforward, Thai education has yet to move much at all. As the Education minister, I have travelled across the country to listen from the direct stakeholders of the education system. I can say with confidence that the students and teachers in our schools have the capability and readiness for growth. What we have to do as the leader of education is to become the enabler by building an education system that answers the demands of a competitive labor force, while also making sure that everyone is equipped with the necessary skills to walk a career path that they desire. This will make Thailand’s human capital robust while accelerating the nation’s growth to new heights. More importantly, Thai education must shift in a way where students depart from their ‘fixed mindset’ of the past and begin to incorporate a ‘growth mindset’ in their daily lives.  This is what the Education Eco-System strives to achieve. This is the modern Ministry of Education that I plan to establish.” Nataphol said.

The Thailand Education Eco-System will use supply and demand mechanisms through building a platform that will provide real-time information on the skill demands that both domestic and international companies are seeking. This platform will “unlock” the highest potential of the Thai education system by bridging the gap between state agencies involved with the Thai curriculum and private companies who are primary employers. This guarantees that the education system answers the demands of the domestic labor force, and eventually abroad.

The “change” will solely focus on the new evaluation process of building new teachers and students respectively. Students will rely less on tests, while teachers rely more on self-growth for higher positions in teaching. A new curriculum and guideline will be established to produce quality teachers, including the administrative body that demands greater management skills. These fundamental changes will inevitably influence the quality of students respectively. The “widening” focuses on improving the capacity of secondary and primary schools, including vocational schools, to be able to develop specialized skills for diversifying career paths, building experts and creating more opportunities.

In order to achieve these goals, the Ministry of Education is introducing 3 new apparatuses for building a sustainable Education Eco-System: 1. Human Capital Excellence Center (HCEC), 2. Digital Education Excellence Platform (DEEP), 3. Excellence Individual Development Plan (EIDP).

HCEC has been established to improve upon the quality of teaching careers for both secondary/primary education and vocational schools across the country. HCEC is integrated into pre-existing schools with adequate facilities to solely improve methods of teaching and enhancing the capacity of teachers to new standards. This integration will decentralize HCEC in ways that facilitates teachers from all corners of Thailand to receive training. As a result, students will receive content and information from their teachers that is more relevant toward building their careers, which is partly driven by what skillsets are demanded by the private sector. By the end of 2020, there will be 185 HCECs across the country, and a further integration in 100 vocational schools by 2021.

DEEP is an online platform for managing Thailand’s education beyond school walls, granting access to anyone with an internet connection. The goal of DEEP (www.deep.go.th) is to promote life-long learning for people of all ages, and acts as a bridge for students, teachers and the private sector to interact with one another through skill-building. The private sector will be able to add contents and modules into the system with the output being an increased supply of skilled-labor that addresses market demand. Teachers will benefit from having access to additional content that can help them excel in their careers, while also being able to use the Teaching Resource Platform (TRP) to supplement their teaching capacity with the pre-existing curriculum taught in schools. Many businesses have joined hands with the ministry to help build DEEP’s database, with plans to grant access to all Thais by 2021.

The IEDP is a program that promotes excellence for students, teachers and the administrative body through transforming the process of evaluating and essentially shifting the KPIs. Students will no longer be evaluated purely by their test scores, instead it would be used to evaluate how to develop them instead. This will result in a major reduction in the number of tests students take annually, and the ministry will use the scores as reference points on how to facilitate independent development instead. The revised curriculum and method of evaluation has already been established and ready to use for 2020/21 academic year.

HCEC, DEEP and IEDP is a very new approach and changes the concept of learning in all dimensions. The new model intends to build confidence and encourage growth which would result in greater interests from foreign countries to invest in Thailand once the nation’s human capital is maximized to its full potential. If any unexpected circumstances were to occur at a global scale, Thai labor will become more versatile and resilient to such impacts or changes in the future.