# _Quality Gap with the Best_

Did Thailand’s expansion of access to secondary and tertiary education, just as other come at the price of lower quality of education? The government has begun reforming the education system. The agenda includes upgrading teacher training, modernizing curricula to meet international standards, operating 175 Local Education Authorities in line with the 1999 National Education Act, promoting school accountability towards parents, and raising mandatory schooling to 12 years by 2015. While there are no data to assess trends in the quality of education over the last decade or so, it is possible to compare Thailand to other countries in terms of test scores. At first glance, it seems that international comparisons of test scores confirm the weaknesses in knowledge and creative thinking. The 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that 15 year-old Thais ranked 36<sup>rd</sup> in mathematics, in science and in reading out of 40 countries.<sup>18</sup> By contrast, their Korean counterparts ranked second in mathematics and in reading and fourth in science. For mathematics, this translates into more than one in two Thai failing to progress beyond the most basic proficiency level compared to only one in twenty Korean. The 2003 PISA results were similar compared to the first assessment in 2000, perhaps indicating that the ongoing education reforms have not yet born fruit.

However, this pessimistic reading of Thailand’s performance can be challenged. Of the 40 PISA countries, 33 are OECD member states. In fact, Thailand consistently outperforms not just Indonesia, whose per capita national income is less than half of Thailand’s, but also Tunisia, Brazil and Mexico whose income levels are 20 percent to 300 percent higher than Thailand. The results of the 1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) show a similar pattern.<sup>19</sup> TIMSS is more evenly balanced among high-, middle- and low-income countries. It includes only 13 industrialized countries out of the 38 participants. Thailand’s eight-graders ranked 27<sup>th</sup> in mathematics and 24<sup>th</sup> in science (statistically equal to the international average). Again, this position looks abysmal against Asian high-income countries: Singapore, Korea, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, and Japan occupied the top five ranks in mathematics, and Chinese Taipei, Singapore, Japan and Korea were placed among the top five in science. Yet, relative to national income levels, Thailand’s performance is satisfactory (Figure 22). For both mathematics and science, Thailand ranks above the trend line for its per capita GNI level. While there are many countries that do worse with lower income (including Indonesia and the Philippines in the southwest quadrant relative to Thailand) or higher income, only Bulgaria does better at the same income, arguably due to the legacy of high human capital during the Communist period.<sup>20</sup> 18 PISA measures the skills and competencies that students have acquired and can apply to real-world context by age 15. The mathematics test had four subcomponents. Thailand ranked 36<sup>th</sup> in three of them and 34<sup>th</sup> in one.

19 TIMSS measures the skills that eight-grade students (typically 14 to 15 years of age) have acquired for the topics from curricula. Thailand did not participate in the 2003 TIMSS. It took part in the 1995 TIMMS but the sampling deviated from approved procedures and the results are likely to be biased upwards.

20 The same holds for Moldova, which is substantially poorer and has similar test score results.

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