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Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the

15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand

Cover photo © UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand iii

Foreword

As part of the study on how to improve the efficiency and fairness of Thailand's educational expenditure, a survey targeting at the 15 Year Free Education Scheme (free-education subsidy from early childhood levels to the completion of basic education) was carried out by the Office of Basic Education Commission (OBEC) in collaboration with the Faculty of Economics, Thammasat University and UNICEF Thailand. By applying the Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS), a survey tool used in many countries, to examine the extent of benefits that reached targeted beneficiaries, the survey was helpful in identifying the programme's financial and management limitations, increasing the transparency in the allocation of resources to schools, together with engaging parents and the civic sector in the supervision of programme spending.

The 15 Year Free Education Scheme accounts for 18 percent of Thailand's education budget, equivalent to more than Baht 90,000 million. The scheme's expenditure tracking is therefore crucial for the improvement of its spending and the quality of educational service. This survey targeted only the part of the scheme managed by OBEC using a budget of more than Baht 40,000 million, covering over 7 million beneficiaries.

UNICEF Thailand provided planning, technical and funding support for the survey design and implementation and contracted an expert (Dr. Bernard Gauthier, HEC Montreal) to advise on the survey analysis and report writing as well as the initial field work, which was headed by Associate Professor Dr. Chaiyuth Punyasavatsut, the Faculty of Economics, Thammasat University, and involved 63 persons (listed in the appendix) working in advisory, data collection and academic

support teams. Data support came from OBEC's Policy and Planning Bureau (สํานักนโยบายและแผน), which took part in the planning and supervision of the survey, data collection exercise from sample groups throughout Thailand and preparation of a report to inform policy.

Presented in this paper are the survey's findings concerning the implementation at the central and school levels, governance system and interrelated issues of the 15 Year Free Education Scheme, together with recommendations to inform policy for future actions.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailandiv

Acknowledgements

The present report is accomplished with the outstanding helps and suggestions from numerous participants from the Ministry of Education and in our series of meetings and seminars. Lists are long and we would like to thank them all here.

In particular, we are grateful to Kamol Rodklai, secretariat of the Office of Basic Education Commission, Rangsun Maneelek, the vice secretariat of the Office of Basic Education Commission-Ministry of Education, Andrew Claypole, chief of the social policy of the UNICEF-Thailand for initiating this collaborative project and providing research funds. Much of the work on coordination and finalizing the reports were done with help from the UNICEF team: Christina Popivanova, Hugh Delaney, Rungsun Wiboonuppatum, Lema Zekrya Syed, Temika Satayawiboon and Chayanit Wangdee; and the Policy Planning Division-OBEC team: Naree Susutti, Payom Chinnawong, Amnaj Witchayanuwat, Lilin Songpasook, Benjawan Duangjai, Pairin Sukhampang, and Pipat Patchpomsorn.

Special thanks are owed to the numerous enumerators from educational district offices who spent considerable time to conduct the field surveys with efforts till the survey was fulfilled.

We especially thank Bernard Gauthier (HEC Montreal) for his dedicated work and technical expertise on supervising the project from the beginning till the end. Much of the report was also written by him.

We also thank our wonderful research assistants, Sudaporn Panklin, Dollapak Chaiyabutr, Natcha Kongkaew, Pongtat Vanichanan and Yongyut Lamoonmorn. Finally, we much appreciate Karen Emmons for editing the final report.

Chaiyuth PunyasavatsutFaculty of EconomicsThammasat University

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand v

Contents

Foreword ...................................................................................................................................... iiiAcknowledgements .........................................................................................................................ivAbbreviations ...................................................................................................................................ixExecutive summary .........................................................................................................................xi

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1

2. Public Expenditure Tracking Survey methodology ................................................ 5 2.1 The Public Expenditure Tracking Survey approach ............................................................ 5 2.2 Main sources of information ................................................................................................ 6 2.3 Sampling ............................................................................................................................. 6 2.4 Scope of the study ............................................................................................................. 10 2.5 Data collection and verification ...........................................................................................11

3. Thailand’s education sector and the 15-year Free Education Programme ........ 13 3.1 Thailand’s education system organization and public expenditure ................................... 13 3.2 Free Education Programme: Background, objectives and rationale ................................. 16

4. Budget allocation, release and spending in the Free Education Programme ... 23 4.1 Budget process: Delays in budget transfers ..................................................................... 23 4.2 Delays in information flow to schools ................................................................................ 26 4.3 Budget allocation: Execution rate at the central level and disbursement to schools ......... 27 4.3.1 Budget execution at the central level ....................................................................... 27 4.3.2 Disbursement to schools .......................................................................................... 28 4.4 School receipt of their FEP resources ............................................................................... 29 4.5 School management of FEP subsidies ............................................................................. 32 4.5.1 Schools’ overall use of FEP subsidies .................................................................... 32 4.5.2 General subsidy for learning and teaching activities ................................................ 35 4.5.3 Books ....................................................................................................................... 36 4.5.4 Learning materials ................................................................................................... 39 4.5.5 Student uniforms ..................................................................................................... 43 4.5.6 Student development activities ................................................................................ 45 4.6 School management of the FEP top-up subsidies ............................................................ 47 4.6.1 Poor student subsidy ................................................................................................ 47 4.6.2 Boarding student subsidy ........................................................................................ 51 4.7 School management of other resources: Lunch and milk subsidy programmes from Local Administrative Offices .............................................................................................. 52 4.8 Resources available at the school level: Inequities and targeting ..................................... 54 4.9 Governance of the FEP .................................................................................................... 65 4.9.1 Role and capacity of the Educational Service Area Office ....................................... 65

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailandvi

4.10 School environment: Teachers and school management ................................................ 68 4.10.1 Absenteeism ........................................................................................................... 69 4.10.2 School directors ..................................................................................................... 73 4.10.3 Parents ................................................................................................................... 73 4.11 Links between FEP and student performance ................................................................ 74

5. Concluding remarks and recommendations ......................................................... 85 5.1 Concluding remarks .......................................................................................................... 85 5.2 Recommendations ............................................................................................................ 90 5.3 The way forward ............................................................................................................... 93 5.4 Lessons learned ............................................................................................................... 93

References .................................................................................................................................... 95Appendix I Survey methodology .................................................................................................... 97Appendix II Basic statistics of survey data .................................................................................. 102Appendix III Information delays ................................................................................................... 104Appendix IV Special and welfare schools under the Bureau of Special Education Administration .106

Tables

Table 2.1: Numbers of surveyed schools in each region, by school size...................................... 7Table 2.2: Main characteristics of the schools in the survey sample ............................................ 8Table 2.3: Main characteristics of the households in the survey sample ...................................... 9Table 2.4: Main characteristics of the teachers and school administrators in the PETS sample .. 9Table 2.5: Main characteristics of the sampled Educational Service Area Office ....................... 10Table 3.1: Education budget, by levels of education, 1999–2014 (million baht) ......................... 14Table 3.2: OBEC education budget, by spending categories, 2010–2014 (million baht) ............ 15Table 3.3: FEP budget allocation, FY 2012/13 and FY 2013/14 (million baht) ........................... 17Table 3.4: OBEC’s Free Education Programme budget, FY 2009/10–FY 2013/14 ................... 18Table 3.5: Per-student subsidies under the 15-year Free Education Programme, 2014 school year ..............................................................................................................20Table 3.6: Top-up subsidies for welfare and special schools under the 15-year Free Education Programme ............................................................................................... 21Table 4.1: Delays in budget petition by the Policy and Planning Division ................................... 25Table 4.2: Delay of school receipt of FEP resources .................................................................. 26Table 4.3: Delay in the information flow about the budget transfer from the Policy and Planning Division to ESAO and to schools (numbers of days) ................................................. 27Table 4.4: FEP central-level budget execution rate, FY 2013/14 ................................................ 28Table 4.5: Allocated per-student subsidy by categories of subsidies and school size, types and location, FY 2013/14 .................................................................................................. 31Table 4.6: School spending by subsidy categories (amounts and shares), FY 2013/14 ............ 32Table 4.7: FEP subsidy spending, receipt and use rate, by subsidy category, FY 2013/14........ 34Table 4.8: Percentage of remaining FEP funds at the school level, FY 2013/14 and FY 2014/15 ................................................................................................................. 34

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Table 4.9: General subsidy use, by category of school activities, amount and share, FY 2013/14 ................................................................................................................. 36Table 4.10: Book expenditure per student, FY 2013/14 ................................................................ 37Table 4.11: Book delivery .............................................................................................................. 39Table 4.12: Student uniform subsidy ............................................................................................. 43Table 4.13: Household receipt of the uniform subsidy .................................................................. 45Table 4.14: Poor student subsidy spending per actual student (baht) .......................................... 49Table 4.15: Household receipt of the poor student subsidy .......................................................... 50Table 4.16: Boarding student subsidy ........................................................................................... 52Table 4.17: Sources of school resources per student (baht per student per year and %) ............ 55Table 4.18: Total resources per student, by source, school level, size and location, including FEP contributions (baht per year) .............................................................................. 56Table 4.19: Gini decomposition, by (non-wage) recurrent income sources .................................. 60Table 4.20: Gini decomposition, by (non-wage) recurrent income sources .................................. 64Table 4.21: ESAO budget and transfers to schools in the PETS sample ..................................... 65Table 4.22: Frequency of schools visits by ESAOs ...................................................................... 66Table 4.23: Frequency of FEP activity visits, by ESAOs, 2013/14 school year (number of visits per school) ...................................................................................... 67Table 4.24: Characteristics of teachers who were absent and reasons for their absence ............ 71Table 4.25: Teachers’ satisfaction in their work, desire to relocate and turnover .......................... 72Table 4.26: School directors’ characteristics, by school size, level and location .......................... 73Table 4.27: Parents’ contributions (baht per student per year) ..................................................... 74Table 4.28: Average O-NET scores of the school sample, by school size, 2013/14 school year . 78Table 4.29: Descriptive statistics of variables in the regression model ......................................... 79Table 4.30: Regression analysis between test scores and their determinants ............................. 82

Table A1: Basic statistics of the PETS findings ........................................................................ 102Table A2: Delay in the information flow on budget transfers from Policy and Planning Division to ESAOs and schools (numbers of days), by ESA .................................... 104Table A3: Main characteristics of school sample under the Bureau of Special Education Administration .......................................................................................................... 108Table A4: Budget of the Bureau of Special Education Administration, FY 2014/15 ................. 109Table A5: FEP subsidy rates for special and welfare schools, FY 2013/14 ............................. 109Table A6: Delay in budget petition by Bureau of Special Education Administration .................110Table A7. Delay of school receipt of FEP resources .................................................................110Table A8: FEP budget execution rate in FY 2013/14 ................................................................111Table A9: Difference between BSEA budget allocation and school reception ..........................111Table A10: Allocated per-student subsidy, by category of subsidy, FY 2013/14 .........................111Table A11: School actual spending shares on each subsidy, FY 2013/14 ..................................112Table A12: Percentage of FEP subsidy receipt, spending and use rate, by schools, FY 2013/14 ................................................................................................................113Table A13. Percentage of remaining FEP funds at school level, 2013/14 and 2014/15 school years .........................................................................................................................113Table A14: Expenditures, by categories of school activities, FY 2013/14 ...................................113Table A15: Learning materials .....................................................................................................114Table A16: Student uniform subsidy ............................................................................................114

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Table A17: Student development activities .................................................................................115Table A18: Source of school resources per student (baht/student/year and %) .........................116

Figures

Figure 3.1: Education budget, 1999–2014 (%) ........................................................................... 15Figure 3.2: Budget and information flows under the FEP ........................................................... 19Figure 4.1: Rhythm of actual FEP disbursement to schools, FY 2013/14 ................................... 29Figure 4.2: Differences between the Policy and Planning Division budget allocation and school receipts ..................................................................................................................... 30Figure 4.3: Percentage of schools experiencing an upward subsidy adjustment, FY 2013/14 ... 32Figure 4.4: General subsidy overuse rate, by school type and location, FY 2013/14 ................. 35Figure 4.5: Book subsidy overuse rate, by school type and location, FY 2013/14 ...................... 37Figure 4.6: Number of books purchased per student, by type of school, location and size, FY 2013/14 ............................................................................................................... 38Figure 4.7: Learning materials .................................................................................................... 40Figure 4.8: Household receipt of learning materials, FY 2013/14 ............................................... 42Figure 4.9: Student development activities ................................................................................. 46Figure 4.10: Poor student subsidy ................................................................................................ 48Figure 4.11: Problems with the lunch programme (non-FEP) ....................................................... 53Figure 4.12: Main problems with the milk programme .................................................................. 54Figure 4.13: Total resources per student, by source and region and by primary and secondary schools ...................................................................................................................... 57Figure 4.14: Total resources per student, by source, region and school size ............................... 58Figure 4.15: Total resources per student, by source and district ................................................... 59Figure 4.16: Poor student subsidy, receiving coverage and spending coverage .......................... 63Figure 4.17: Main problems with the FEP, as reported by ESAOs, 2013/14 school year ............ 68Figure 4.18: Teacher absenteeism ................................................................................................ 70Figure 4.19: Share of work week devoted to FEP and other administrative work ......................... 72Figure 4.20: FEP resources and total school expenditure per student, 2013/14 school year ....... 75Figure 4.21: Relationship between school size and per-student spending, by primary and secondary schools .................................................................................................... 76Figure 4.22: Parents’ contributions and percentage of poor students ........................................... 77Figure 4.23: Average test scores (ONET) and school expenditure per student ............................ 80Figure A1: Provinces in the survey sample, by geographical region ....................................... 100

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand ix

Abbreviations

ESA Educational Service AreaESAO Educational Service Area OfficeFEP Free Education ProgrammeFY fiscal yearGDP gross domestic productGFMIS Government Fiscal Management Information System LAO Local Administrative OfficeOBEC Office of the Basic Education Commission O-NET Ordinary National Education TestsOPEC Office of the Private Education CommissionQSDS Quality Service Delivery Survey

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailandx©UNICEF Thailand/2013/Jingjai N.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand xi

Executive summary

The Government of Thailand has invested important resources in basic education in the past few decades to improve access and quality of basic education for all. Public spending on education increased by more than 50 per cent in real terms between 2000 and 2014, when it represented 21 per cent of the government budget and 4.1 per cent of gross domestic product. Through the 15-year Free Education Programme (FEP), which provides subsidies to primary and secondary schools and households, the Government seeks to improve the quality of basic education and all children’s access to it.

Despite the progress in enrolment in primary and secondary schools in the past decade, barriers to equitable and quality education remain. Net primary school enrolment was more than 90 per cent in 2012 and continues to be marked by disparities in access for disadvantaged groups, in particular children from poor households and ethnic minorities, children living in remote areas and with disabilities and migrant children. National and international test scores reveal declining education outcomes and wide gaps in performance and knowledge among student groups.

In 2015, UNICEF Thailand, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, conducted a Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) of the FEP. The objective of the PETS is to assess the efficiency and equity of public expenditure on education through the programme and evaluate the services offered to children. By tracking the flow of resources through the various levels of the public administration down to schools and households, the PETS monitors how much designated public resources reach intended beneficiaries and identifies bottlenecks in the programme’s implementation so as to diagnose problems in service delivery and to propose measures to strengthen performance, accountability and monitoring.

Created in 2009 to reduce parents’ financial burden and promote free basic education for all young people, the FEP represents the main source of non-wage recurrent public funding to primary and secondary schools. In fiscal year (FY) 2013/14, the FEP budget amounted to 91.7 billion baht (about $2.6 billion), representing 17.7 per cent of education expenditure.

This report presents the findings of the PETS conducted between January and April 2015 in a sample of 190 public primary schools, 50 public secondary schools and 10 special and welfare schools located in 24 districts (of 225) in Thailand. Information was also collected from a sample of 1,863 teachers and 2,500 households, complemented by data from district and central education authorities, including from the Government Financial Management Information System data (managed by Comptroller General’s Department).

The survey and ensuing analysis focused only on the public school component of the FEP, which is provided through the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC). The FEP also covers private and vocational training schools under the responsibility of Local Administrative Organizations through other central government agencies. In FY 2013/14, the OBEC component covering public schools represented 80 per cent of eligible primary and secondary school students in Thailand and about 46 per cent of the programme’s budget.

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Executive summary

Programme design and central governance issuesThe FEP was designed to pursue horizontal and vertical equity objectives through a subsidy allocation system to schools.

The FEP objectives include universal quality education promotion and poverty reduction. Through various capitation grant (per student) transfers to primary and secondary schools, the FEP pursues its objectives of access to quality education for all children (horizontal equity). In addition, through the ‘top-up’ subsidies for poor students and boarding and special school students, the FEP promotes increased access and enrolment for disadvantaged groups through income redistribution (vertical equity). The poor student subsidy differentiates schools in terms of student population’s poverty levels, ideally compensating for inequities across school populations. While the ultimate cash recipients of several subsidy components are households, the FEP has adopted the unusual approach of pursuing its allocation and redistribution objectives through a subsidy allocation system to schools. Three of the five subsidy categories to students are administered by schools (learning and teaching activities, school books and student development activities), while the other two subsidies (student uniforms and learning materials) are transferred by schools to parents in-cash or in-kind. In addition, the poor student subsidy is allocated to schools, based on a school assessment of student poverty rates, and could be transferred in-kind or as cash to households. Such an indirect approach of subsidy transfers to households, which gives schools management and monitoring responsibility, could potentially reflect a distrust of parents’ decisions and choices for their children’s education. However, it introduces various efficiency and equity problems associated with inadequate targeting at the school level. Budget thresholds affect the programme’s potential impact.

Current rationing of the poor student subsidy affects FEP impact and fairness. Due to budget constraints, the poor student subsidy is allocated to schools with a maximum threshold of 40 per cent of total enrolled primary students and a 30 per cent threshold for lower secondary students. Among the surveyed schools, the poor student subsidy rationing left an estimated 45 per cent of the poor student population uncovered in FY 2013/14. In rural schools especially, almost half of the poor students enrolled in schools in that same fiscal year were not covered by the poor students subsidy transfer. The current rationing of the poor student subsidy affects the fairness of the programme. Poverty incidence is not uniformly distributed across schools. The PETS found that many schools, especially in rural areas, experienced more poverty than the national average but were allocated a fixed subsidy share.

Despite being the main non-wage recurrent funding, the FEP subsidies constituted a small share of the overall resources at the school level, especially among primary schools. In FY 2013/14, the FEP transfers to schools represented about 10 per cent of the total education resources per student available at the school level. Among primary schools, the programme’s transfers represented only about 8 per cent of total resources per student but constituted about 19 per cent of secondary schools’ resources per student.

Public teachers’ wages from OBEC accounted for about two-thirds of the total resources available at the school level in FY 2013/14. Local governments and other public (non-OBEC) contributions accounted for about 12.5 per cent of primary schools’ total resources, surpassing the

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Executive summary

FEP transfers, but were almost negligible (less than 1 per cent) for secondary schools. Parents’ contributions through school fees accounted for 6 per cent of secondary schools’ resources but only 0.3 per cent of primary schools’ resources.

Important variations occur in resources available per student across school types, locations and regions.

Total resources available per student tended to decline significantly with increased school size. The PETS found that the total resources available per student in small schools were twice what they were in large primary schools and about one fifth greater than in large secondary schools. Public schools in rural areas, both primary and secondary, received substantially more resources per student than those located in urban areas.

Across regions, primary schools located in the North had access to the largest total endowment of resources per student (at 65,119 baht) in FY 2013/14. This represented 36 per cent more resources per student than in the South, which presented the lowest level of resources (at 47,963 baht per student). Secondary schools located in the South had 16 per cent less resources per student than those located in the North-East (at 33,210 baht, compared with 39,661 baht, respectively).

Differences in resources available across schools were largely due to the unequal distribution of human resources across school locations and sizes. The variation was mainly associated with differences in teachers’ experience across schools, which affects education quality. Inequalities also emerged from differences in the private resources collected by schools (parents’ school fees and local business and community donations) across school locations and communities.

FEP transfers were not large enough or targeted enough to compensate for differences in resources associated with the unequal distribution of teachers and parents’ contributions. St i l l , the FEP t ransfers helped reduce the educat ion resource inequal i t ies. The PETS found that every 1 per cent increase in the FEP’s basic learning activity and poor student subsidies reduced the overall inequalities in resources available per student (as measured by the Gini coefficient of relative inequality in total resources per student) by about 7 per cent in the primary schools and 15 per cent in the secondary schools.

If the current ceilings on the poor student subsidy were removed (40 per cent for primary school and 30 per cent for secondary school students), and if the subsidy were allocated to all reported poor students enrolled in schools, it would represent, on average, an extra transfer of 1,437 baht per primary school student and 2,147 baht per secondary school student. Given the 3.7 million poor students reportedly enrolled in Thailand’s public school system in 2014, removing the budget constraint would represent an extra budget requirement of 5.9 billion baht to the public treasury.

Based on analysis of the PETS findings, the removal of the poor subsidy ceiling would lead to improved vertical equity in terms of education resources per student among schools. The budget threshold removal would have an especially significant effect on secondary schools, contributing an estimated 3.7 per cent reduction in total resource inequality, compared with the 1.2 per cent reduction among primary schools.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailandxiv

Executive summary

Programme implementation issues at the central government and school levels

Inadequate targeting of the poor student subsidy at the school level reduces vertical equity.

About three-fourths of the surveyed schools used the poor student subsidy without targeting, providing in-kind services to all students, both poor and non-poor. On average, subsidies were used for uniforms (at 44 per cent of the surveyed schools), meals (at 19 per cent) and transportation (at 16 per cent). But important variations occurred among school locations and levels. Rural and primary schools preferred spending the subsidy on uniforms (including for sports), while the secondary schools mainly used the subsidy to provide school lunches for lower-secondary students.

The practice of schools allocating the subsidy in-kind to all students within the school reduced the programme’s potential to achieve vertical equity. This practice could help reduce disputes and disparities among poor households—giving previously excluded households access to some benefits. Especially for small rural schools in which most students could be considered poor, such a practice also reflects schools’ inability to screen students by poverty level and reach needy students. It also indicates the lack of specific guidelines given to schools for managing the poor subsidy in the presence of rationing. Ultimately, schools’ practice of using the poor subsidy budget without targeting their spending to poor students is inequitable and dilutes the already reduced per-head subsidy reaching poor students. The lack of targeting of the poor student subsidy is also a form of resource leakage because allocating funds to all students, even those from households with sufficient income, reduces the subsidy given to each poor student.

Among the quarter of schools choosing to transfer the poor student subsidy as cash to households, few kept records of such transfer, despite the FEP guidelines requiring signature approval from each school committee. The PETS found that only 15 per cent of households reported receiving the poor subsidy in cash, which was far less than the 25 per cent coverage reported by schools. The level of transfers reported by households was less than the yearly subsidy set by the guidelines, at only about 13 per cent for primary school children (with students receiving 133 baht rather than 1,000 baht, as per the guidelines) and about 55 per cent for lower secondary school children (with students receiving 1,703 baht rather than 3,000 baht).

Determining the eligible poor students was done without clear guidelines. This practice has potential to result in discretionary decisions on which beneficiaries are selected by school teachers and variance in the criteria used across schools. Determining which students will receive the subsidy and management of the process is time consuming and arduous for school officials and teachers, leading not only to potential biases in beneficiary selection but also reduced teaching time for students.

A large share of the poor student budget appeared to remain unused at the school level, remaining in school bank accounts or school-managed student accounts. The PETS found that, overall, there was limited transparency surrounding the FEP because most schools did not share information with parents about the programme. Most households that were survey were not aware of the poor student subsidy.

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Executive summary

Resource flows are affected by imprecise programme guidelines and timelines.

Lack of specific timelines for FEP management at the central level was associated with significant delays in the budget petitions and budget disbursement, which caused the FEP subsidies to reach schools and students late during each school semester. The overall duration of the various FEP subsidy transfers to schools, via the OBEC Treasury, took about 50 days for the general subsidy’s first tranche during the second semester of the 2013/14 school year, while the second tranche was even later, at 72 days on average. The same duration occurred with the poor student subsidy. During the first semester of the 2014/15 school year, shorter delays occurred, except for the boarding student subsidy, which took on average about two months to be transferred to schools.

Discretionary fund use is evident at the school level due to imprecise guidelines.

The imprecise FEP guidelines also explain the discretionary use of the non-executed FEP budget by the Policy and Planning Division. In FY 2013/14, the unused funds at the Policy and Planning Division totalled 5.6 per cent of the planned FEP envelope, amounting to 2,273 million baht, explained in part by a decline in student enrolment and rationing of the poor student subsidy. Given weak guidelines, the unused funds were applied (as per a historical practice) to the school utility bills.

School directors had various interpretations of the FEP guidelines, giving rise to variation in their discretionary use of the subsidies and transfer to beneficiaries. The FEP guidelines at the school level are imprecisely defined and weakly enforced, in particular regarding subsidy use and modalities for transferring the subsidies to households (for uniforms, poor students, books and leaning materials).

Schools reported through the PETS underspending on certain subsidy categories while overspending on others during FY 2013/14. In particular, overspending was reported for basic learning activities, books and the poor student subsidy while underspending occurred for uniforms, student development activities and the boarding school subsidy.

Noticeable underspending occurred with the student development activities subsidy, with large primary schools in urban areas and medium-sized secondary schools in rural areas spending only about two-thirds of their subsidy allocation on these activities in FY 2013/14. This underspending was reflected in the relatively low coverage of the activities; about 19.6 per cent of schools did not provide all four required activities during the academic year. The PETS also found that parents’ supplementary contributions for these activities reached 1,500 baht in the medium-sized and large secondary schools in urban areas.

Important variations occurred in school modality choices for allocating subsidies to households. For instance, one quarter of schools chose to allocate the learning materials subsidy as in-kind to students, with the rest providing a cash transfer to parents. The transferred amount reported by parents was smaller than what was specified in the FEP guidelines, especially for primary school students. Accordingly, 60 per cent of parents with children in primary school reported having to spend extra funds to buy learning materials, and nearly 80 per cent of parents with children in rural secondary schools spent extra on learning materials.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailandxvi

Executive summary

Another important variation occurred in the use of the books subsidy across school locations, with primary and secondary rural schools reporting about 50 per cent lower spending on books per student, compared with urban schools. Rural secondary schools bought fewer books per student (at 11.5 books) than urban secondary schools (at 14 books).

Various delays occurred in subsidy transfers to households. For instance, the learning material subsidy reached households on average 37 days after the beginning of the second semester of the 2013/14 school year. Shorter delays were experienced for the first semester of the 2014/15 school year (at 17 days on average), although it took 42 days for households with children in large urban schools to receive the subsidy. Delays in transferring the uniform subsidy in cash to households were reported in about one third of the surveyed schools, totalling 23 days on average after the beginning of the semester. Given the small subsidy amount, about 90 per cent of households reported having to spend more on school uniforms because the subsidy they received was insufficient.

Deficiencies in financial transfers and accounting systems are evident at the school level.

Schools experienced problems of assigning funds due to insufficient information accompanying electronic transfers, leading to an increase in fungibility. Financial transfers of the FEP subsidies to schools, made electronically by the OBEC Treasury to school bank accounts, were allocated in bulk, mixed together with other programme funding and without immediate information sent to schools regarding the fund composition of the transfer. This practice led to problems when assigning funds at the school level and to increased fungibility across subsidy categories and programmes.

The financial accounting system at the school level was characterized by a lack of capacity and a weak information management system of FEP funds, both within schools and to higher administrative levels. Given the poor quality of financial records and the lack of a standardized mechanism for schools to account for resource use (either electronic or paper based) and poorly kept records, the data collection of information on the allocated budget and spending was arduous and often imprecise among the sample schools, with systematic errors in accounts evident, due in part from schools not managing their subsidies by category. Poor accounting makes it difficult to assess programme results and efficiency in use at the school level and increases the risk of fund leakage, fungibility or usage not consistent with programme purpose or rules.

About half of the school sample experienced mismatches (positive and negative) between the OBEC Treasury allocation and receipt of the resources. This was most likely explained by school accounting errors and the overall poor quality of schools’ bookkeeping and records. Given these gaps, the OBEC Treasury electronic allocation from the Comptroller General’s Department data was used in the analysis to estimate FEP resources available at the school level.

At the school level, unused FEP funds represented more than 20 per cent of subsidies at the end of the past two fiscal years, amounting to about 8.6 billion baht at the national level ($240.6 million)—and this despite overspending the FEP budget in FY 2013/14. These unused funds should in principle be transferred back to the OBEC Treasury after two years. It is unclear why schools retain these funds over time. Large unused funds can be associated with various shortcomings in school financial management and could reflect the weak accounting system at the school level, inexperience in financial management and weak monitoring by the Educational Service Area Offices (ESAOs).

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Executive summary

Other governance and cross-cutting issues

Self-reporting in the context of weak supervision creates moral hazards at the school level.

At the district level, ESAOs had limited supervision capacity and struggled with resource-capacity constraints. In FY 2013/14, the ESAOs conducted on average only one supervision visit per school for FEP monitoring purposes. Accountability was also weak across the government agencies involved in the programme’s implementation. In the context of weak monitoring, schools faced incentives to misreport self-reported information in order to increase their FEP allocations. ESAOs initially collected the student information required for subsidy calculations, but increased school autonomy in recent years has meant that—except for the boarding student subsidy, which is still based on ESAO information—inputs for subsidy calculations by the Policy and Planning Division are now based on self-reported school information, including student enrolment and student poverty status.

The absence of an integrated information management system across school systems introduces potential problems of ghost students and leakage.

The absence of an integrated data management system across school systems created potential problems of ghost students, distortions in the FEP allocations and resource leakage. The non-integration and absence of data sharing among the two public school systems—one under the jurisdiction of OBEC and the other under local government authority responsibility—and a private primary and secondary school sector under the jurisdiction of the Office of Private Education Commission (which also receive FEP support) created possibilities for ghost (fictitious) students and associated distortions in the FEP allocation and fund leakage. The little information sharing between the three school systems on student enrolment and student lists—compounded by schools’ practice of keeping students on records for some period of time after they have dropped out or moved away (to another school system, private or public)—introduces potential problems, including the double counting of students.

The redundancy of students is amplified by the observed practice in some schools of not discharging non-active students and not reporting their whereabouts. Some school officials reported keeping students on their lists after they had stopped attending school for an extended period of time with the rationale that they may come back. Such practice, which leads to underreported drop-outs and overreported enrolment, could explain the low rate of school drop-outs within the OBEC system, which is often at odds with statistics from other education sources. Schools’ incentive to retain ghost students, especially ‘poor ghost students’, to increase the discretionary subsidy transfers, creates possibilities of resource leakage, given that schools with fictitious students receive more budgetary allocations than what they are otherwise entitled to receive.

Weak social accountability mechanism affects efficiency and equity.

Current limited households’ awareness of the poor student subsidy affects transparency and local accountability and reduces potential impact on education enrolment and retention. Providing information to the community about the poor student subsidy cash transfer and encouraging and formalizing participation could help promote education and increase the enrolment rate among poor households. Targeting all poor households rather than only poor students enrolled in schools would also help increase enrolment of children from impoverished households.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailandxviii

Executive summary

Raising awareness among the population about the FEP benefits and eligibility is fundamental to increasing the positive impacts. If households could see the increased benefits of sending their children to school, they might more likely choose to enrol them. Although it is difficult to anticipate what incentives would change a household’s perspective and if it would be sufficient to outweigh the cost of sending children to school, their knowledge of such opportunities as the FEB is crucial to their decision-making. Raising awareness about the benefits and eligibility is hence crucial to increase potential FEP impacts. This information would be especially important for poor families whose children tend to be the first to drop out of school or choose not to enrol.

Various factors in the school environment, especially a high rate of teacher absenteeism, affect education quality and student performance.

High turnover of teachers and directors occurred in remote areas, potentially affecting education quality. While teacher allocation across schools is the responsibility of the central ministry, understaffed and overstaffed schools were evident, due largely to the limited number of students enrolled in small rural schools with numerous older teachers and low student-teacher ratios.

Teacher absenteeism was widespread. The PETS findings indicate that about one in twelve teachers in Thailand’s public schools are absent from school on any given school day. The rate of absenteeism from school and from the classroom was calculated through an unannounced visit to 12 teachers randomly selected. Absenteeism is an important factor to take into account, given that teachers’ absences lead to reduced teaching time and education quality, which in turn impact school results or participation rates of students.

Absence from classrooms in the secondary schools was especially striking because teachers were absent from classrooms more than two-thirds of the day among the surveyed schools. In the small urban secondary schools, they were not around for three-fourths of the school day. In the primary schools, teachers were absent from their classroom about one fifth of the time and about one fourth of the time in urban schools.

Various factors could affect teacher absenteeism, including some directly related to administrative requirements associated with the FEP. School personnel and in particular teachers are expected to devote part of their work week managing the implementation of the FEP. The management of FEP subsidies, in particular the poor student subsidy, which involves identifying poor students, verifying their household poverty status and then managing the subsidy and transfer to them, also potentially affects teaching incentives and quality. FEP management left to teachers leads to potential trade-offs between administrative duties and teaching time and could affect absenteeism.

FEP inputs and other school resources are associated with student performance.

The econometric results show that delays in FEP resource transfers to schools, along with teachers’ absence, were associated with lower standardized student test scores. Student performance on the Ordinary National Education Test in five core subjects for Grades 3, 6, 9 and 12 were significantly higher in schools located in urban areas and increased with school size, except among the primary schools, for which medium-sized schools presented the lowest test scores. Average student test scores at all grades were negatively affected by delays in the FEP subsidy allocation and teacher absence. Performance was lower among students in primary schools with a high incidence of poverty, reflecting the insufficient targeting and level of the poor student subsidy.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand xix

Executive summary

Policy recommendations and the way forward

FEP design and central-level management issues Improve vertical equity and efficiency. Explore (within the Ministry of Education) possibilities of implementing a direct cash transfer programme to poor households, using poverty definition guidelines, to improve the targeting of the poor student subsidy and vertical equity. To overcome problems related to the distribution of resources and targeting to poor households, the Policy and Planning Division likely will need better information about the poverty levels in each school.

Remove or increase the budget allocation for the poor student subsidy by removing or at least increasing the budget thresholds. The current ceilings in the poor subsidy transfers, based on number of enrolled students at the school level, should be lifted to increase vertical equity.

Improve equity of the FEP allocation. The Ministry of Education should provide supplementary funding to (i) schools located in disadvantaged areas facing limited autonomous revenue from the community and (ii) schools with special needs students and/or in schools’ need for additional core curriculum activities and special learning programmes.

Integrate student data lists across the three school systems. This should be a priority to allow verification of students and proper accounting of student enrolment in order to reduce the possibilities of ghost students, overfinancing in the FEP programme and potential leakage of funds. A verification of fictitious students should be done through the verification of the number of students reported in school exams and national examinations, in comparison with the reported number of enrolled students in school records and with the allocated FEP funds.

Make single FEP programme transfers to schools. The OBEC Treasury should stop transferring the various budget allocations in bulk to schools. Detailed information should accompany each fund transfer to facilitate assignment of the FEP funds among the subsidy categories at the school level to reduce the potential reallocation of funds.

Promote increased competition in book procurements. By enhancing the competition in the book procurement market at the national and regional levels, book delays and costs could be reduced. The current requirement of book procurements from an accredited book list should be reconsidered.

Programme implementation issues at the central government and school levels

Improve poverty screening at the school level.

Revise the practices of poverty screening at the school level because they lack monitoring of operations and rigorous evaluation to ensure effectiveness of the FEP as intended. Clear guidelines for determining eligible poor children should be a formalized part of the programme. A better information system should be developed to identify the needy students and schools (those with greater poverty status).

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailandxx

Executive summary

Improve resource flows.

Improve the budgetary preparation system and introduce specific timelines for the budget management of the various subsidies at the central government level. Specific timelines should be prescribed in the FEP guidelines at the central OBEC level and the Policy and Planning Division for the subsidy transfers to schools to allow the timely availability of resources.

Improve guidelines and introduce timelines for FEP implementation at the school level. FEP guidelines are important for schools to properly manage the FEP funds. It is also important for schools to access official guideline information early, either through electronic or paper-based forms, once funds are transferred.

Improve the accounting system at the school level as well as schools’ financial capacity and the reporting mechanism. Efficient and standardized bookkeeping and a system for information transmission from schools to the higher administrative levels should be put in place, with integration with the Data Management Centre, system to allow for the tracking and reporting of funds received and used.

Introduce guidelines for fund use at the school level and provide training on subsidy use to school administrators to reduce rule interpretations and variance among schools in the provision of subsidies to beneficiaries.

Introduce guidelines and criteria for use of unspent FEP funds at the school level to reduce the moral hazards and uneven discretion by school directors.

Other governance and cross-cutting issues

Improve information and accountability.

Enhance the ESAO supervising role and accountability. Currently, the ESAOs fulfil a limited part of their responsibilities in overseeing, monitoring and supervising the FEP. The ESAOs should emphasize verification of school receipt of FEP funding and monitor FEP spending. To do this, the ESAOs should be given sufficient resources, including trained monitoring and evaluation personnel.

Enhance the transparency of subsidy transfers to households. Receipt of cash transfers to households and school records of subsidy transfers should be enforced at the school level.

Enhance transparency and information to households about the FEP. Improve the dissemination of information to households, including programme objectives and recipients’ obligations and subsidy eligibility, in particular in relation to the poor student subsidy. The better provision of information to households about the programme and subsidy objectives and their obligation should contribute to improving programme outcomes.

Enhance accountability at the school level. Along with increased autonomy of budget and personnel management, public schools should be held more accountable for their education outputs and outcomes. Disclosure of budgetary and student performance information to local communities and parents could hold schools and teachers accountable for their performance.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand xxi

Executive summary

Introduce an annual report on FEP activities, use of the subsidies and results at the school level. An annual report may contribute to increased accountability, transparency and education quality.

Enhance public participation. Raising public participation and awareness could enhance knowledge among households and effectiveness of the programme.

Improve teacher allocation mechanisms and reduce teacher absenteeism.

Enhance teacher management and deployment. Poor aggregate results of student performance are a hotly debated policy topic. In addition to efficiency of FEP resource use, education quality is also affected by various other factors, in particular teaching quality. The distribution of teachers across locations is the responsibility of the central ministry. Small primary schools in rural and remote areas are understaffed and have low teacher retention, both of which affect the quality of the learning experience. Improving incentives and mechanisms to rebalance the distribution of teachers across the country is necessary to improve learning quality.

Reduce teacher absenteeism and improve staff incentives. Reducing teacher absenteeism is fundamental to increasing teaching time and thus improving education outcomes. A way to reduce absenteeism is to link pecuniary and non-pecuniary incentives as well as relocation options with attendance. Procedures should be put in place to reduce the FEP administrative time required of teachers, especially in heavy-poverty areas.

The way forward

Based on the PETS assessment of the FEP resources and access in Thailand, there are several next steps that could be taken to better measure quality and assess school performance, beginning with further research to fill the knowledge gap on issues of efficiency and equity in education in Thailand, such as:

• Overall assessment of the FEP, using a PETS on the three parallel primary and secondary school systems (under the jurisdiction of the OBEC, the Local Administration Organizations and the Office of the Private Education Commission) to assess equity and efficiency issues between sectors, compare school quality and student performance and develop best practice learning.

• Development of alternative ways to identify eligible beneficiaries for the poor student subsidy and to transfer the subsidies to poor households.

• Impact evaluation study of the method now in place for targeting poor households for the student subsidy scheme to assess the effectiveness of the cash transfer programme.

• Assessment of education quality, school use of resources and accountability using a Quantitative Service Delivery Survey or in line with the Service Delivery Indicator framework.

• Analysis of factors explaining teachers’ absenteeism and the impacts on education quality.

• Analysis of classroom management and time on task. Improve education quality by understanding teachers’ time allocation in school and classrooms.

• Analysis of small schools’ efficiency, equity and quality and determine incentives and advantages of consolidation at the school and community levels.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand 1

1. Introduction

The Government of Thailand has invested important resources in basic education over the past decades to improve all children’s access to quality basic education. Public spending on education has increased by more than 50 per cent in real terms since 2000 (World Bank, 2010, p. 22). In 2014, it represented 21 per cent of the government budget and nearly 4.1 per cent of gross domestic product (Bureau of the Budget, 2014). And though enrolment in primary and secondary schools has increased in the past decade, there are still barriers to the equitable access to quality education for some children. Indeed, net primary school enrolment remained at slightly more than 90 per cent in 2012 (latest data) and is marked by disparities in access for disadvantaged groups, in particular children from poor households or ethnic minority households, children living in remote areas or with disabilities and migrant children (Tran Ringrose and Shaeffer, 2014, p. 5). Education quality remains an issue, according to national and international test scores that reveal declining education outcomes and wide gaps in performance and knowledge among student groups (Punyasavatsut, 2012, p. 290).

Motivated by the quality issue, UNICEF Thailand, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, facilitated a Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) to assess the efficiency and equity of public expenditures in education through the Government’s 15-year Free Education Programme (FEP) by evaluating the services offered to various categories of children.

The FEP was created in 2009 to help reduce the financial burden on households and promote free basic education for all. By fiscal year (FY) 2013/14, the FEP budget amounted to 91.7 billion baht (about $2.6 billion), or 17.7 per cent of education expenditures. The FEP represents the main source of non-wage recurrent public funding to primary and secondary schools. Based on a per-student allocation, funding for three of five subsidy categories is administered by schools (for learning and teaching activities, school books and student development activities), while the other two subsidies (student uniforms and learning materials) are transferred by schools to parents in cash or in-kind. In addition, top-up subsidies cover additional needs for students in special schools or boarding schools and impoverished students in public schools; these subsidies are also transferred to households by schools in-kind or as a cash payment.

The PETS is a multipurpose tool used globally to monitor how much of intended public resources reach intended beneficiaries and to identify bottlenecks in programme implementation so as to diagnose problems in service delivery. By tracking the flow of resources (financial and in-kind) through the various levels of public administration down to schools and households, the PETS follows the allocation of resources to determine financial and institutional constraints and assess if the funds were used as intended. The overall purpose is to promote greater transparency of public resources at the school level and help parents and civil society to hold schools, public administration and government to account.

In Thailand, the PETS looked only at the public school component of the FEP, which is provided through the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC). Although the FEP is also allocated to private and vocational schools, the public school component accounts for 80 per cent of eligible primary and secondary school students, and in 2014, it consumed about 46 per cent of the FEP budget.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand2

1. Introduction

The survey was conducted between January and April 2015 in 24 districts (of 225) in the country, among a sample of 190 primary schools, 50 secondary schools and 10 special and welfare schools. Information was collected from school officials as well as a sample of 1,863 teachers. For financial and other critical data, the survey extended to central government and district-level sources, such as the Government Financial Management Information System, or GFMIS (managed by the Comptroller General’s Department, Ministry of Finance). Information was also collected from parents about the FEP subsidies received from their school to support their children’s education. Through a sample of 2,500 households, the FEP looked at household behaviour and constraints.

The study monitored FEP implementation during FY 2013/14 (which ran from 1 October 2013 to 30 September 2014), which corresponded to the last semester of the 2013/14 school year and the first semester of the 2014/25 school year.

Division of issues within the reportThis report comprises five chapters. Chapter 2 presents the survey methodology and samples. Chapter 3 presents an overview of the education sector and the FEP. Chapter 4 presents the main findings of the survey regarding potential delays, bottlenecks in implementation and equity issues. It also explores governance aspects of the FEP, focusing on the role of central and district offices as well as teacher absenteeism issues. Using standardized test results, it examines links between the FEP, school quality and student performance. Chapter 5 concludes with a summary and policy recommendations. Further details on the survey methodology are placed in Appendix I, and Appendix IV presents the survey results on welfare schools.


2. Public Expenditure Tracking Survey methodology

The PETS is a resource-intensive tool. To diagnose bottlenecks and other types of inefficiencies in a programme, the survey needs to be well designed and carried out; and then the results need to be well disseminated in order to contribute to better accountability, transparency and ultimately improved outcomes.

2.1 The Public Expenditure Tracking Survey approach

The PETS has been applied in about 75 countries over the past two decades and has proven to be a powerful instrument at identifying bottlenecks, inefficiencies and waste in service delivery; in particular, it picks up problems with delays, leakage, information, record keeping, absenteeism, equity, decentralization, user fees and efficiency (Gauthier and Hamed, 2012).

In Thailand, the PETS looked at five elements of the 15-year FEP: i. resources (inputs) mobilized in the programme: their sources and importance (including

parents’ contributions); ii. how (process) these resources are mobilized: components, subsidies and allocation mechanisms

used and various channels to schools; iii. how (process) these resources are used: expenditure centres and use at the central,

decentralized and school levels; iv. inefficiencies and inequities in resource allocation within the programme; and v. results achieved with these resources: intermediate and final outputs and education outcomes.

As noted, the FEP subsidies (per student) are transferred by the OBEC to schools to cover various non-wage recurrent expenditures. Parts of the subsidies are transferred in-kind or as cash to households to cover students’ related needs (uniforms and learning materials). In addition to the basic subsidies, poor students and boarding students receive cash transfers from their school.

Little information is currently collected and reported by schools to the district or central Ministry of Education on the receipt of the subsidies or their use, including by households. The PETS thus provides, on a sample basis, information on subsidy levels and use by schools and households. In doing so, the survey complements the routine Educational Management Information System as well as the education system’s internal evaluations.1

Ultimately, the survey diagnoses potential problems in budget allocation and should lead to a plan of action to improve efficiency, effectiveness and equity of public resources. It also should help enhance the system of recording and reporting at various levels, especially at the school level, to promote better systems of monitoring, accountability and governance of resource flows and use.

1 The PETS is not an audit because it does not reconcile the use of the funds nor try to find missing resources or identify people responsible for issues.



2.2 Main sources of information

Information on the FEP derived from two main sources: official data from the OBEC and the PETS findings. Central-level data covered the budget planning process and funds released for the FEP. Data at the decentralized level were collected from schools, district administrations and households, covering receipt and use of subsidies by OBEC schools and in-kind or cash receipts by households. The survey comprised fives modules:

1. school module2. teacher module3. absenteeism module4. household module5. district administration module.

Module 1 is a school facility questionnaire that was administered to the school director or head of each surveyed facility. The module concerns school characteristics, infrastructure and inputs, receipt of the FEP resources, school expenditures (including transfers to households), governance, supervision activities and perceived problems in the programme and at the school level.

Module 2 is a teacher module administered to 12 teachers in each surveyed school, including the school director, to collect data on teachers’ characteristics. Using the teacher roster, teachers were randomly selected from among all teaching staff. Questions referred to teaching experience, education level, salary, training, job satisfaction and career mobility.

Module 3 is an absenteeism module to calculate the absence rate of teachers from schools and classrooms. An unannounced (second) visit to schools on a day and time when the school is in session allows for verifying absenteeism rates among a random sample of 12 teachers per school. Reasons for absence are also collected from school directors.

Module 4 is a household survey administered to 10 parents chosen randomly from among the student body to collect data on parents’ characteristics and receipt and use of the FEP subsidy. The module comprises questions on household characteristics, income, received transfer of the FEP funds, use of those funds and satisfaction with the programme.

Module 5 is a district administration questionnaire used with the district education head administrator. It comprises questions on district characteristics, budgets, expenditures and supervision activities.

2.3 Sampling

The survey was conducted in 24 districts (of a total 225) among a sample of 190 primary schools, 50 secondary schools and 10 special and welfare schools. The survey sample was based on the list of public schools under the OBEC’s responsibility in each educational service area (which is similar to a school district and referred to as an ESA, with the administrative office referred to as the ESAO). Public schools under the OBEC were the units of observation and a two-stage cluster sample design was employed to select schools. The country was divided into survey collection districts (which overlapped with the education service areas) for the two types of ESAs: primary ESAs and secondary ESAs. In 2014, there were 183 primary ESAs and 42 secondary ESAs. The first sample stage entailed



selecting 10 per cent of each type of ESAs to obtain a total of 24 randomly selected ESAs. The second stage entailed choosing 10 schools in each selected ESA. These 10 schools were proportionately chosen to reflect size distribution in the area. Those 240 schools represented about 0.8 per cent of the school population in the country under OBEC responsibility.

In addition, the survey focused on public welfare schools for disadvantaged children and special public schools for children with disabilities, which are also under OBEC responsibility. These schools are not distributed equally across district areas or provinces. In 2014, there were only 51 special schools in 43 provinces and 43 welfare schools in 36 provinces. In the 24 selected ESAs for this study, there were only 13 welfare and special schools. Due to the small population size, 10 schools were selected from among them to ensure relatively meaningful statistics.

Overall, the survey sample of 250 schools thus represents a population of 30,600 OBEC schools. The sample covers 24 ESAs, in which 19 primary ESAs and 5 secondary ESAs were randomly selected. The selected ESAs represent 10 per cent of the ESA population, covering all regions in Thailand.

Table 2.1 shows the number of schools by school size (student population) in each selected primary and secondary ESA. Among the primary ESAs, 52 per cent were small schools (with fewer than 120 students), while the medium (121–600 students) and large (601+ students) schools accounted for 45 per cent and 3 per cent of the sample, respectively. Among secondary ESAs, small schools (with fewer than 500 students) accounted for 38 per cent of the sample, while medium (500–1,499 students) and large (1,500–2,499 students, plus extra-large, which goes beyond 2,500 students) accounted for 33 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively.

Table 2.1: Numbers of surveyed schools in each region, by school size

a. Primary educational service area

RegionSchool size1

TotalSmall Medium Large

North 34 20 6 60

Central 20 24 6 50

North-East 20 16 4 40

South 17 18 5 40

Total 91 78 21 190

b. Secondary educational service area

RegionSchool size2

TotalSmall Medium Large Extra large

North 5 3 1 1 10

Central 5 7 4 4 20

North-East 5 3 1 1 10

South 4 3 2 1 10Total 19 16 8 7 50



c. Special and welfare schools

Region No. of schoolsNorth 3Central 2North-East 3South 2Total 10

Note: Primary education: small schools: 1–120 students; medium schools: 121–600 students; large schools: 601+ students. Secondary education: small schools: 1–499 students; medium schools: 500–1,499 students; large schools: 1,500–2,499 students; extra-large schools: 2,500+ students.

Source: Thailand PETS, 2014.

Sample characteristicsTables 2.2 to 2.5 present the queried characteristics of the surveyed schools, households, teachers and ESAOs.

Table 2.2: Main characteristics of the schools in the survey sample

Primary Secondary TotalBasic characteristicsNumber of schools surveyed 190 50 240Number of small schools 91 19 110Number of boarding schools 7 5 12Average number of students 248.9 1,105.2 455.8Average parent contribution (baht) 1,627 7,361 2,821DistanceAverage distance to ESAO (km) 24.6 71.1 32.9Electricity and IT deviceElectricity access 99.5% 100.0% 99.6%Have electricity problem 25.8% 64.0% 30.4%Average number of computers per student 0.1 0.1 0.1Average number of tablets per student 0.1 0.2 0.1Internet access 97.4% 98.0% 98.3%Good state-provided internet service 58.4% 58.0% 58.3%InfrastructureHave drinking water problem 52.1% 44.0% 50.4%Percentage of girl toilets in school 50.6% 60.9% 52.8%StudentsPercentage of poor students 29.2% 16.0% 26.4%Percentage of minority students 5.5% 0.5% 4.4%Percentage of registered foreign students 4.9% 0.4% 3.9%Percentage of unregistered foreign students 4.6% 0.2% 3.7%BooksSchools with newspapers for students 67.9% 92.0% 74.6%Average number of books in library 2,980 16,913 5,883



Primary Secondary TotalRooms and classesAverage number of classrooms 12.7 30.0 16.5Pre-primary class size 16.4 16.4Primary class size 18.0 18.0Secondary class size 33.1 33.1Teacher Average number of teachers 17.2 62.7 26.6Average student-teacher ratio 14.2 16.2 14.6Percentage of teachers absent from school 8.8% 5.0% 8.0%School directorAverage years of experience in this school 6.1 2.2 5.3Average years of experience as school director 14.1 11.6 13.9Average years of total experience as civil servant 30.4 31.8 30.7


Table 2.3: Main characteristics of the households in the survey sample

Rural Urban AllNumber of sample households 1,420 1,080 2,500Female respondents 80% 80% 80%Number of ethnic minority households 6% 6% 6%Households receiving poor student subsidy 53% 53% 53%Average age of household head 45 46 45.5Average household size 4.7 4.6 4.6Average number of children attending school per household

1.7 1.6 1.68

Average education level of parent respondent (years)

7.3 7.5 7.4

Average monthly income (baht) 8,520 8,911 8,660


Table 2.4: Main characteristics of the teachers and school administrators in the PETS sample

Primary schools Secondary schools All

Number of sample teachers 1,863 600 2,463Percentage of female teachers 70.4% 29.6% 70%Average age 47.7 45.2 47Married 73% 64% 71%Master’s degree or higher 11.3% 14.8% 12%Average number of years of experience 20.2 16.5 18.9Average monthly salary 36,535 34,739 35,657Average school absence (days) 9 7.5 8Average teaching hours per week 15.4 14 15




Table 2.5: Main characteristics of the sampled Educational Service Area Office

Mean Maximum MinimumNumber of students 31,760 119,544 10,571 - Pre-primary 4,093 8,017 1,781 - Primary 15,209 30,941 7,499 - Lower secondary 8,906 61,456 1,137 - Upper secondary 6,223 58,088 34Service area (sq km) 4,131 18,654 506Longest distance to school (km) 33.5 99 40No. of schools under supervision - Primary ESAO 137 228 49 - Secondary ESAO 54 67 27Total budget (million baht) per district 8.4 9.2 7.8 - Administrative budget 5.4 6.2 4.8 - Development budget 3 3 3


2.4 Scope of the study

As explained previously, the scope of the PETS in Thailand was on the 15-year Free Education Programme and covered only public schools under OBEC responsibilities, from pre-primary to secondary schools, as well as the special and welfare schools for disadvantaged students. Hence, the study does not encompass private and vocational schools also under OBEC jurisdiction or public schools under the responsibility of the Local Administrative Office (the administrative tier of government below the district level and referred to as a LAO). The FEP also provides subsidies to private and vocational schools as well as LAO schools, but those subsidies are allocated through other government agencies and with different rules and implementing processes than those under OBEC jurisdiction.2 The choice of scope for this study was made to limit the analysis to schools under OBEC responsibility, which represented about 80 per cent of primary and secondary school students in Thailand and 46 per cent of the FEP budget in 2014.

In addition to analysis of the efficiency and equity in the transfer and use of the FEP resources, the study encompassed an assessment of staff incentives and a measurement of teachers’ school and classroom absenteeism. The study also looked at the levels and timing of resources received by households and their use of the subsidies.

Using students’ test score results on standardized national tests, the study also examined links between the FEP and other resources available to schools and education performance. Although the FEP represents the main source of non-wage recurrent funding to schools and subsidies to households, various other Ministry of Education programmes cover recurrent expenditures (such as teachers’

2 Private schools are entitled to receive 100 per cent of FEP subsidies, plus 70 per cent of all teachers’ salaries. Such sub-sidies are allocated and managed through a different Ministry of Education agency, OPEC. Private schools that receive partial subsidies can impose an additional school fee to cover their operating costs. Public schools under local government authorities are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior.



wages and utility costs) and investments. Thus, it is difficult to attribute direct causality to the 15-year programme with regard to school outputs or students’ learning results.3

2.5 Data collection and verification

The survey was conducted between January and April 2015 in 24 districts. The PETS data collection team comprised 50 trained enumerators who participated in a pre-test survey prior to data collection. Enumerators were ESA officers with long experience in school finance and institutional structures. Using ESA officers was assumed as not presenting any conflict of interest because the FEP budget is directly transferred to each school’s bank account. The benefit of making use of officers who are well aware of the programme’s structure was viewed as outweighing potential objectivity issues. Still, various measures were taken to mitigate potential problems, including the random verification of collected data by the central research team who visited schools and households.

In each ESA in the survey sample, two enumerators were responsible for data collections from 10 schools and 100 households. The enumerators visited schools and households three to five times during the three-month survey period. Households were selected randomly by the enumerators from a school’s parent list. The enumerators’ responsibility encompassed administering all the PETS modules through announced school visits, except the teacher absenteeism questionnaire, which was administered through an unannounced visit to measure teacher absence from schools and classrooms.

Field monitoring visits were conducted in all regions during and following the survey implementation. Schools and households were randomly selected by the central research team for a site visit that lasted two to three hours. During those monitoring visits, the school director and teachers in charge of the FEP were interviewed about the rationale and understanding of guidelines and regulation of the FEP spending. The school visits included discussion on the ESAO role in FEP implementation and governance. The household visits followed the school visits. The field monitoring trips proved informative and helped the research team identify crucial issues relating to potential FEP leakage and misuse.

Data verification, data entry and cleaning Data verification proved crucial but time consuming. When data inconsistencies were detected, the research team contacted the corresponding enumerator for verification. The primary issues detected centred on accounting balances of the FEP at the school level and incomplete questionnaires.

Once verified, data were inputted by a trained data entry team. Entries were double-checked to ensure accuracy. Data cleaning was then conducted using Stata. Quality and coherence of the PETS data were also ensured by triangulating with the Ministry of Education database, OBEC Treasury data and GFMIS data from the Ministry of Finance.

3 Various institutional arrangements or practices could affect basic education accessibility and quality, such as the unofficial practice of not allowing grade repetition in primary and secondary schools in order to increase enrolment, although it leads to poor average student test results.

Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand12© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit


3. Thailand’s education sector and the 15-year Free Education Programme

This chapter describes the education system in Thailand and the role of the Ministry of Education and, more specifically, the OBEC, which manages the FEP for schools under its responsibility. The discussion then goes into detail with the objectives, importance and means of the FEP under the OBEC.

3.1 Thailand’s education system organization and public expenditure

Thailand’s education sector is based on the 2007 Constitution and the 1999 National Education Act. The Constitution states that all Thai citizens have an equal right to receive free quality basic education for at least 12 years. The National Education Act (with a 2010 amendment) obligates the Government to provide general subsidies for the basic education provision in both public and private schools. The free basic education provision covers pre-primary, primary and secondary education. Compulsory education is nine years, enforcing the enrolment of all children at the lower secondary level.

Among many ministries (such as the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Tourism and Sports and the Ministry of Culture), the Ministry of Education is responsible for promoting and overseeing all levels and types of education, formulating education policies, setting plans and standards, mobilizing resources and monitoring and evaluating education providers.

Public basic education is administered and managed centrally, subnationally and within schools. At the central level, OBEC is responsible for formulating basic education policies, work plans, standards and core curricula, mobilizing resources, monitoring and evaluation and prom

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