Thread: Thai teachers need to improve, degrees do not make a teacher

Rounded teachers needed

Education reform must start with well-rounded teachers and improvements in educational personnel, enabling them to make good use of technology, Education Minister Wijit Srisa-arn said yesterday.

Many teachers were "lost" focusing on obtaining a degree but had no spirit, he said.

Giving a speech on "Teachers and Quality Improvement of Thai Education" yesterday at Bangkok's Royal River Hotel, Wijit said educational efforts to enable Thais to compete with others in the globalised age must start with teacher and personnel reform so that they could meet high professional standards.

The reform should also ensure that teachers have career advancement and security as well as social and economic status that was not inferior to other professions.

Improvement in teaching meant having educational quality assurance both inside and outside educational institutions, he said.

The Office of National Educational Standards and Quality Assessment was currently responsible for this area, but its recent assessment on schools and institutions revealed that most schools had failed.

Student achievements were unsatisfactory, as seen from the Ordinary National Educational Test results, especially in Thai language, which only had a 50 per cent pass rate, he said.

One problem in regard to the quality of teachers was the common misconception that any bachelor degree holder could teach students well, but degree holders with "no vision and spirit" were not useful, the minister said.

Many have complained that work teachers undertake in order to climb the Academic Rank Classification (ARC) system was not beneficial to students and saw them abandon their key mission of teaching children, he said.

As a result, the ministry would evaluate the work that teachers do for promotion based on benefit to students, and would reflect on quality teaching and ensure the ARC system was not merely a promotion for civil service positions.

The most immediate problem was the shortage of teachers, especially in small schools. Wijit said the ministry had assigned the Basic Education Commission to find a solution to that problem before submitting a report to the Cabinet in October.

As for teachers who were teaching subjects that did not match their educational background, Wijit said they would be sent to improve their knowledge of English, maths and the sciences.

Wijit said technology could be a useful aid if teachers knew how to utilise it. But he said no technology could totally replace teachers, and urged them to learn how to use technology in class - and not just stick with "talk and chalk".

"What we must seriously think about is developing learning through computers and develop lessons with appropriate content," he said.

The Nation