Primary Education in Thailand: Plans, Problems and Possibilities.

The article takes a brief look at Thai education within the national context to examine some of the problems in primary education and to observe what is being done and what can further be done to improve the situation. The rate of expansion in the Thai education system has been considerable, as data on primary school enrolments between 1950 and 1971 indicate. The education system has increasingly been seen as a means of bringing about social and economic development. The author describes the system as wasteful and irrelevant to most of those who live in the rural areas, using up vital resources and not leading to greater economic or agrarian development. Many of these problems are recognized, but reforms set in motion do not go far enough but merely help to perpetuate the existing system.