Hijacking students isn’t the answer

Hijacking students isn’t the answer
Published on December 09, 2005

Teachers opposed to education reform shouldn’t turn to protest tactics that threaten their pupils’ education. It has become clear that the protesting teachers are desperate to block the process of education reform, which is part of the government’s overall decentralisation plan. They have threatened to shut down schools.

They have disrupted their students’ education, marched on the Education Ministry and even participated in anti-Thaksin Shinawatra demonstrations. There seems to be little they wouldn’t do to force the Thaksin administration to reverse its plan to put state schools under the administrative purview of local governments.

It is understandable that many teachers are unhappy with the controversial school-transfer plan. Many are taking part in collective bargaining to make their voices heard and get the government to pay attention to their demands. Many of the tactics they are using in their negative campaign against Prime Minister Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai Party may even be deemed acceptable. But using their students as pawns to advance their cause is downright disgusting.

But on Wednesday, some 50,000 protesting teachers gathered outside Parliament while lawmakers debated amending the decentralisation law. The teachers reacted angrily when Parliament refused to strike out the phrase “on a voluntary basis” when referring to the transfer of state schools from central to local government control.

Anti-reform teachers see the inclusion of the phrase as a threat, because hundreds of schools nationwide have voluntarily subjected themselves to local governments, including tambon administrative organisations, municipalities and provincial administrative organisations. The transfer is in line with education and decentralisation master plans for making schools accountable to the communities they serve, as well as make them more responsive to local needs.

Under the decentralisation plan, beginning next year up to 35 per cent of locally raised taxes will be retained by local governments and spent in their respective communities. Increasingly, local government bodies will take over most of the responsibilities now handled by the central government, as they gain greater control of their own affairs.

The House of Representatives has done the right thing in retaining the “voluntary” clause. Now it is the Thaksin administration’s turn to stiffen its resolve to push through the twin objectives of education reform and decentralisation envisioned by the 1997 Constitution.

Both the Thaksin government and the protesting teachers must be reminded that they are engaged in both modernising the country’s education system and developing fuller democracy. On both fronts, Thailand can no longer afford to procrastinate.

In theory, divestment of the central government’s authority to local governments must begin with upgrading the administrative skills of the local governments, along with the creation of institutional and legal frameworks for promoting good governance and public education. This would create an environment in which local governments can effectively serve their community, the members of which are supposed to take an active part in decision-making. And there would be no reason why functioning local governments could not also take on the responsibility of supervising local schools, which would better serve local the needs of local residents. Unfortunately, both decentralisation and education reform have been delayed for several decades, because the road to democratisation and an improved education system has been strewn with stumbling blocks. Politicians have consistently failed to implement potentially painful change and stand up to resistance by disaffected elements bent on maintaining the status quo.

There is still much to be done in the upgrading of local governments’ administrative skills. And the government must reassure state schoolteachers that their working conditions and professional standards would not be compromised once their schools came under local supervision. The central government, namely the Education Ministry, which has the expertise to judge teachers’ performance fairly against accepted standards, should continue to be in charge of quality assessment, to ensure checks and balances against local governments, which are the teachers’ new employers.

Protesting teachers must be made to understand that their sense of insecurity cannot be allowed to stand in the way of education reform and decentralisation of government. The government and the Thai public must see to it that resistance to reform will not succeed.

Create Date : 09 ธันวาคม 2548 Last Update : 9 ธันวาคม 2548 14:57:00 น. Counter : 881 Pageviews.		0 comments
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