Thailand is going to shrink its civil service by 15% over the next eight years. The education ministry is now working out what that means for schools.
The Cabinet approved the plan on 11 August. It came from the Office of the Civil Service Commission and targets more than 30,000 posts by 2032. The aim is to bring down the state’s recurring wage bill.
Education Minister Prasert Chanthararuangthong said his ministry is looking at structure and staffing together, because the problem is not simply too many people.
Some parts of it are short-handed. He named the Department of Learning Encouragement as one that still does not have enough staff.
The Office of the Basic Education Commission runs the state school system. It has both very large schools and a great many very small ones.
Teachers are also carrying work that has nothing to do with teaching. Procurement and paperwork are the usual examples, and Prasert said that runs against the government’s own policy of lightening the load on teachers.
He plans to call the agencies involved into a meeting and move staff to match what each one actually does.
More than 10,000 state schools have 120 pupils or fewer.
Prasert was clear that the ministry is not just closing them or merging them into each other. The approach he described is shared management and shared resources between schools.
He has told the basic education office to sort the schools by size first. How many have 50 pupils or fewer, how many have 70, how many have 100 and how many have 120.
Only then will the ministry set measures for each group.
The plan also connects to Thailand’s education sandbox areas, which currently cover 20 provinces. Those are being built up into quality schools that smaller schools nearby can share.
Rural families cannot send children to a better school 30 kilometres away without transport, so the ministry has to solve that too.
Parliament’s budget committee wants harder numbers. It has asked how many small schools will actually be reorganised in the 2027 and 2028 budget years and beyond.
Prasert has passed that to the secretary-general of the basic education office to answer.
He was blunt about why the ministry cannot simply decide this from Bangkok.
“Managing or merging small schools cannot be done with numbers alone, because you have to consider the views of school boards and the community,” he said. Many areas still do not agree with closing or merging schools, he added.
His summary was that the ministry is moving away from closing small schools. It is moving towards grouping them, sharing resources and building good schools close to home.
For foreign families here, the direct effect depends on where your children study. International and private schools sit outside this system entirely.
State schools are the ones being reorganised, and outside the main cities they are often the only option. If you live rurally, the school your children attend may end up sharing teachers or facilities with neighbouring schools.
The backdrop is Thailand’s falling birth rate, which is emptying classrooms faster than the system can adjust. Private schools are feeling it as well, with several in Bangkok already applying to close.
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The story Thailand to cut 30,000 civil service jobs, and small schools are next in line as seen on Thaiger News.
