A decade of education reform in Thailand: Broken promise or impossible dream?

This study addresses the perceived gap between the vision of education reform in Thailand embodied in its Education Reform Law of 1999 and the results of implementation a decade later. Drawing upon opportunistic data obtained from a sample of 162 Thai school principals, we analyze trends in reform implementation across schools in all regions and levels of Thailand’s K-12 education system. The results suggest that a decade following the formal initiation of education reform, changes in teaching and learning, ICT implementation and school management systems have yet to engage the nation’s teachers to a substantial degree. The lack of results is linked to a reform strategy that has emphasized top-down implementation and a cultural predisposition to treat change as an event rather than as a long-term process. Copyright © 2011 University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education.