@article{oai:nagoya.repo.nii.ac.jp:00002478, author = {若林, 満 and WAKABAYASHI, Mitsuru}, journal = {名古屋大學教育學部紀要. 教育心理学科}, month = {}, note = {In December, 1992, the Thai Government initiated its seventh five-year development plan, the National Economic and Social Development Plan (NESDP), in which the expansion of basic education from the present 6 year elementary to 9 year lower secondary education is set to be one of the major national goals within the policy area covering human resources and quality of life development. In response to this national plan, Ministry of Educatio, Thailand, immediately made public its seventh National Educational Development Plan (NEDPlan) and declared that by the end of the seventh plan (1996) basic education be expanded up to 9 years throughout the nation. According to the Ministry of Education, Thailand (1992), the formulation of this policy implies government efforts to incorporate missions and goals manifested by the World Declaration on "Education for All" proclaimed at Jomtien, Thailand, 1990. The present study was designed to explore the process of the natinal educational policy implementation at the local level by observing, during October/November, 1992. the activities and practices undertaken by people concerned in Roi-Et Province, one of the least developed areas located in the northeastern Thai region. For the purpose of implementing the policy of expanding basic education, the following three approaches were designed by the Thai Government: (1) to add secondary classes to the elementary school, (2) newly establishing secondary schools and its branches, and (3) increasing the secondary enrollment in non-formal education. Then, the related local offices and departments were asked to plan schedules for the expanded basic education within their respective administrative jurisdiction. In Roi-Et, a variety of local educational offices represent policy implementing functions in connection with budget allocation and policy planning, controlled by the head offices in Bangkok. These offices are: Office of the National Primary Education Commission (ONPEC), General Eduction Department (GED), Vocational Education Department (VED), Department of Non-formal Education (NFE), Private Education Office (PEO) and Department of Fine Arts (DFA), all of which belong to the Ministry of Education, and Office of Local Elementary Education (OLEE) that represents the Ministry of Interior. Each office and department seemed to follow its rather narrow jurisdictional boundary in practicing either one of the three imprementation strategies mentioned above. Local elementary and secondary schools followed directions given by the respective educational offices in Bangkok to which they are attached in practicing concrete programs and projects for realizing the national target of expansion of compulsory education. The result of our explorations focused upon those local offices and schools involving their efforts in implementing the difficult, but critically important national educational objective, are summarized as follows. (1) Centralized Planning and Local Dependency The basic policy and planning for implementation of expansion of the basic education program were made at the national level. Then, Roi-Et educational offices were asked to lay down concrete procedures and time tables for expanding the period of basic education from 6 to 9 years at the local level. According to the projected figures proposed by the Roi-Et Governor's Office, the three key local organizations, namely ONPEC, GED and NFE that govern the primary, secondary and non-formal education, respectively are brought to implement their own expansion plans to achieve the overall Roi-Et's expansion target that forcasts 98.0% secondary enrollment by 1996, the end of the Seventh NEDPlan. However, budget appropriations required for the expantion, i.e., the costs for school construction, teacher recruitment, textbook lending, etc., were found being totally out of the local control. This situation seemed creating not only local dependence on central planning, but also uncertainty and a lack of confidence in the educational administration at the local level. Moreover, the lack of coordination among local educational offices generated by the absence of the central local autonomy tended to make provincial integration and cooperation very difficult in carrying out the necessary projects to meet the local needs for expanding secondary education. All in all, the worst scenario expected under this centralized planning could be, "A plan is just a plan," as one of the local officials commented rather plainly. (2) Needs for Decentralized Administration at the Local Level In addition to the budget requirements, local administration processes for implementing the program of expanding the basic education were found to require many locally initiated projects to make the program successful. Some of these projects may include: (1) educating parents on the importance of schooling beyond the elementary level and asking them to send their children to the secondary classes, (2) providing free lunch to the needy pupils, (2) lending the textbook free of charge, (3) permitting non-uniform attendance to those who can not aford the school uniforms, (4) providing free means of transportation to those living in remote areas from the secondary school, (5) flexiblly arranging school hours to accommodate with hours of labor for some working pupils, (6) building dormitories for those who can not commute, (7) creating income generating projects within the school to help poor pupils earn self-help educational funds, and so forth. It is evident that unless these projects were implemented successfully at the local level, the centrally programed national policy for the expansion of basic education could never be achieved as originally planned. However, management of these projects typically requires collaboration among several offices across jurisdictional lines and also considerable amount of participation of the local residents in the project administration. However, the result of our investigation indicated that, to the best of our knowledge, very little such local actions were undertaken in Roi-Et Province so far. This illustrates the problem of the lack of decentralized administration required for the policy implementation at the local level. In this report, a rather successful case of local project management involving the rural primary health care activities implemented with the help of Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) in Roi-Et was shown as an illustration of locally sustainable decentralized administration of the development program. Then, it was emphasized that the present program for the expansion of basic education would probablly need the similar local management organization (like the board of education in western societies) that incorporates all available educational resources and information at the local level. 3) Expanded Basic Education and Opportunities for Employment Throughout the interviews with people in rural Roi-Et, uncertainty of better employment opportunities after the expanded schooling was found to be one of the key reasons to explain their reluctance to send the children to the secondary school. Some of the rural people seemed to believe that employment opportunities made available in the Roi-Et area after finishing the lower secondary school would be no more attractive than those available after the 6 year elementary education. This pessimistic expectation on the return of educational investment persists across rural areas in Roi-Et Province, thus making it difficult for a large number of parents to spend an extra amount of money for sending their children to the lower secondary schools. Therefore, it will become a very important local policy agenda for schools and educational offices to develop some projects for the purpose of establishing linkages between completing the lower secondary education and availability of better employment opportunities in and/or outside the Roi-Et Province. Establishing this type of linkages would contribute to break the parents' pessimism for the merit of expanded education and also to reinforce pupils' conviction in better education. However, it seems no systematic effort has ever been made to this effect so far within the Roi-Et educational circle, partly because there exists no single administrative office responsible for solving this problem; All offices and departments seem too much preoccupied with their own expansion program to think about what would happen after the expansion. On the other hand, vocational colleges in Roi-Et have long practiced internship programs to help their senior students acquire work experiences in the private sector by collaborating with companies located within and outside Roi-Et, so that students can relate their studies with potential job opportunities while studying in the school. This model indicates that the expansion of compulsory education program would be required to initiate serious attempts by working closely with companies and industries for the purpose of streamlining quality employment opportunities for the huge human resource output delived from the expanded lower secondary education. This would constitute another challenge for educational development in Thailand., 国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。}, pages = {59--76}, title = {タイ国における基礎教育期間延長計画の地方レベルでの展開 : タイ東北部Roi-Et県での調査から}, volume = {40}, year = {1993} }