Thailand - Public Revenue and Spending Assessment : Promoting an Inclusive and Sustainable Future - Chapter 5 : Spending for Improved Student Learning (English)

This chapter identifies spending inefficiencies that explain why higher levels of education spending in Thailand have not translated into improved learning outcomes. It begins by providing an overview of education spending trends. Section 5.2 then assesses the country's performance in terms of education access and per-pupil spending by benchmarking Thailand against international peers at similar stage of development. The relationships between public expenditure and human capital accumulation, as measured by PISA 2018 test scores, are analyzed in Section 5.3. The results indicate that Thailand's spending efficiency has deteriorated as the increase in spending over the last fifteen years has not translated into any improvement in student learning. The worsening spending inefficiency was further compounded by widening inequalities in student achievement. Section 5.4 then goes on to identify the root causes of the high and rising spending inefficiency, as well as investigate how equitably educational resources have been allocated among the schools. It finds that the bulk of the inefficiency was concentrated in the primary level, resulting mainly from the existence of a vast network of small schools with tiny classes. Even though per-student costs for these small schools were much greater than those for larger schools, they were chronically short of teachers and other key educational inputs. A recommendation to consolidate the school network is proposed to create larger, better resourced schools which do not face such shortages. The chapter ends with an analysis of various education financing scenarios that would be consistent with improved learning outcomes. Three different scenarios are analyzed in the section. First is the 'Baseline' scenario, which reflects business-as-usual management of the education sector and in which the economy's long-run growth path is assumed to follow the low-growth potential level. The second scenario, called 'School network reorganization,' is the same as the baseline scenario, except that the Government will begin to implement a 15-year program to downsize Thailand's vast network of mainly small primary schools in 2023. Finally, the 'High growth' scenario assumes that the Government will initiate wide-ranging reforms to improve student learning. These reforms would encompass reorganizing the school network (as in the second scenario), as well as substantially raising public per-student spending at the pre-primary, secondary, and tertiary levels to be in-line with international peers. In this scenario, learning outcomes improve significantly, shifting Thailand's potential growth rate upwards.