Education quality is crucial toThailand's future economic success. While lower-incomecountries in East Asia are experiencing a bulge in theiryouth population, Thailand's youth labor force isexpected to decline by 10 percent over the next decade. As aresult, the labor-intensive comparative advantage thatcontributed significantly to Thailand's past economicperformance will diminish. This means that it is essentialfor Thailand to develop the human capital of its decliningyoung work force to ensure the country's futurecompetitiveness and economic growth. Education is asignificant component of human capital development, theeconomic benefits of which are firmly established in thepolicy literature to have a positive effect on economicgrowth. However, the success or failure of education interms of increasing productivity and growth dependscrucially on its quality. Thailand has participated in twointernational student assessments to measure the quality ofeducation: Organization for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD's) Program for International StudentAssessment (PISA) and the IEA's Trends in Mathematicsand Science Study (TIMSS). This study also supports policydialogue on improving accountability mechanisms forpublically funded private schools. The above findings revealthat public schools outperform private schools even thoughprivate schools receive public funding. The implication isthat the accountability mechanism for private schools thatreceive public funding needs to be improved in order toensure that private schools are providing high qualityservices. There are several international examples of strongaccountability mechanisms for publically funded privateschools. One example is the voucher scheme used in theNetherlands. This provides schools with equal funding perstudent with which schools have considerable freedom on howto use this funding; however, they must meet specificperformance requirements.
PDF
download
878987797
028-85220240
