STELLAR RANKINGS ON
BOTH THE GLOBAL AND
REGIONAL STAGE IN OVERALL
EDUCATIONAL INDICATORS,
THAILAND HAS IT'S WORK CUT
OUT AHEAD OF THE LAUNCH
OF THE ASEAN ECONOMIC
COMMUNITY NEXT YEAR
The results are in and they ain't pretty. According to the World Economic Forum's "Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014," Thailand ranks at a dismal 8th place in the 10 members ASEAN grouping when comes to its educational systems suitability for meeting the needs of a competitive economy. The Kingdom finished even below its impoverished northern neighbour, Laos, and just above Cambodia.
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Globally, the situation looks bleaker still. In the quality of its
primary education the country ranks - steady yourself at place 86
out of 148 countries. The overall ranking of Thailand's educational
system also places it squarely in mid-table, at 78th place out of the
same 148 nations surveyed. Meanwhile, according to the most recent
scores of to Programme for international Student Assessment (PISA),
Thailand is sitting pretty in the bottom 25 percent - at 50th place out
of 65 countries surveyed. Tne country's then education minister
Chaturon Chaisaeng declared himself "stunned" at the results.
Perhaps he
should not have been. The Kingdom's shortcomings in almost all areas of
education are nothing new. In 2010, for instance, Thailand ranked 116th out of 163 countries on the global charts for the Test of English as a
Foreign Language (TOEFL), landing among the bottom five countries
even in Asia together with Vietnam, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and
Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor). In general, Thai students did poorly
equally on speaking, listening, writing and reading.
