Data for this analysis comes from the assessment of indicators of School Autonomy and Accountability using a scale developed under the World Bank’s Systems Approach for Better Education Results, or SABER (see Box 1). The assessment of the indicators of policy intent in School Autonomy and Accountability was done in the first trimester of 2011, and validated during the East Asia Regional Conference on Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER), June 6-8, 2011 (World Bank 2012). The assessment of the indicators for policy implementation was done in 2012, using data collected in the 226 schools that were sampled by the 2009 PISA.

The report is organized as follows: Section 2 presents an overview of education in Thailand, setting the stage for the assessment of its education policies. Section 3 gives an overview of school autonomy and accountability through a conceptual framework that is used as the basis for the development of indicators of policy intent and policy implementation. Section 4 summarizes the results of the benchmarking on policy intent and discusses the content of the intent and implementation rubrics. This section presents the basic results of the two benchmarks. Section 5 presents the results of the implementation survey, and the links between the intentimplementation gaps with PISA results and selected covariates, and section 6 presents the conclusions and recommendations.

# **2. Education in Thailand: Searching for the path to high performance in education**

Education in Thailand is regulated by the Education Act of 2002, which establishes that all children should compulsorily study for nine years—six years of primary plus three years of lower secondary (OBEC 2003). For the past few years Thailand has made substantial gains in secondary education achievement, getting closer to the levels of the better performing countries in East Asia. UNESCO (2011) estimates that the school-life expectancy in Thailand is 12.3 years of education, which means that, on average, Thai youth are expected to finish secondary school.

Still, the Ministry of Education considers that Thailand has structural problems that are manifested in different forms:

- Education quality remains low due, mostly to the scarcity of good teachers. Based on learning assessments, there is a need to substantially improve learning in mathematics in primary school and in science in secondary school.

- Non-formal education still falls short of adequate coverage, particularly in rural areas, and problems continue in the area of education quality, which vary significantly by schools managed by different agencies.

- There is a need to improve primary and secondary education in order to produce students with higher levels of critical thinking and improved levels of problem-solving skills.

- Inequalities persist in education funding, especially between urban and rural areas.

Starting in 2002 school finances and school administration were decentralized at the Education Service Area level. The Education Service Area (ESA) is a division of the Ministry of Education responsible for the overseeing, monitoring, evaluation and dissolution of basic education institutions. The ESA also coordinates and promotes private institutions in the area and for the coordination with the Local Administrative Organizations (LAO, which are managed by the Ministry of the Interior). The ESA receives the transfers from the Ministry of Finance and 4