School in Prakhon Chai

[RichardH]

Nick

I can say there are some positive things about Kanlayaprasit and I guess if it is the only choice around to send your kids ....what else can you do but I can assure you as nice as the owners of the school are and as sweet as the teachers may seem, the quality of education received is not a huge step above the Public School system in Bangkok (since I don't know much about the public school system here). I am certainly not making any attempt to upset anybody that has chosen to send their kids to Kanlayaprasit. The small things are not a concern to me, like, maybe a warm meal for lunch sometimes or quality bathrooms with possibly western toilets but the students that leave the school (M3) should know that England and America do not sit next to each other but there is no Geography or History other than what is deemed necessary by the MOE regarding Buddhism taught at the school but all the government employees that send their children to the school, with the government paying of course, will be happy to see that the kids at least know how to help sweep the school every day and plant flowers and have less hours of effective classroom activity than what is considered normal most places.

The Thai teachers that teach English are no more qualified than most poorly trained English teachers in the public system.

I am not sure what the answer is because nobody really wants to have to move away or send your children to a school with boarding facilities just to get an adequate education but when my daughter becomes a bit older she will not be going to Kanlayaprasit.

Anyway, thanks for the response, heated or not, I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

Rich

[Prakhonchai Nick]

Richard

I would agree wholeheartedly your comments re the Thai teachers that teach English. However we must remember this is Thailand. Are the Thais who teach English in Bangkok schools any better overall? We as parents have to decide where we live and make the best of what is available.  I have private tuition for my kids in English -with limited success.

My 12 year old son has just confirmed that school lunch is "aroi" and never cold. (and he is a very difficult eater). He has NEVER had to sweep the floors or been asked to do gardening. Lack of geography and history is sadly a Thai thing (is there anywhere other than Thailand??), whilst as for Buddhist teaching -..please don't get me started!!. As I said this is Thailand and we  either accept  what is or move our kids elsewhere.

An international school in Pattaya, Chiang Mai or Bangkok will likely set you back 500,000bt a year! Kids are worth every penny you can pay -but not many can afford those fees!

None of this helps your original question. Frankly I believe there is nothing better locally.

Nick

[RichardH]

Nick

Thanks again for your response and I think that the more I talk the worst I might make others feel.

Regarding the smallest issue...school lunches. They have no warm or hot food for the students, including rice, and what they slap on the metal jail plates is probably not something to make the kids complain much about but the public schools in BKK it is usually warm or hot.

How the students, as in your sons case, are chosen for M1-1 rather than M1-2, I don't have any idea but it appears the method could be better as it is a blanket system and often doesn't work. The reason is that every student that is in M1-1 (the senior M1 class) is not at the same level. In another words, some of the students, like your son, is at a higher level of English than another student in the class who might be great at Math but does Not know 1 word of English and when he is in English class or whatever subject he needs help with, he is in trouble because the other students pass him by and he may learn little, if anything. But when math class comes, he does fine. This is no different than public schools.

In English class, the Thai teachers know they should speak ONLY ENGLISH but like public schools they teach most of the English class in Thai.

Much effort is done by the admin to make sure the appearance is acceptable to all and students miss more than enough class for activities of all types including a massive amount of holidays.

Just a note: I was told that parents pay as much as 6.500 for nursery level per term

Anyway, I won't kill a dead horse with more of my rhetoric about the subject. Take care and hope to talk to ya about a more interesting subject in the future.

Rich

[Prakhonchai Nick]

Hi Rich

This is an interesting subject, and you are not flogging a dead horse.  Your information is largely at odds with what I know and am told by my kids. I had to check an earlier thread to see that we were both speaking of the same school.

Your child is in nursery. They occupy a separate part of the school, and eat their lunch earlier than the rest of the school.  It may well be cold, but my son assures me that his lunches are not cold.

I do not believe there is an M1-1 and an M1-2. There are to be just 25 children in M1 (one class) these 25  being selected from some 90 students in P6  by exam and an assessment of their behaviour.  I think this is an admirable way of selecting. At least selection is not a result of under the table payments as regularly occurs at government schools!

The only holidays apart from the summer recess and half terms are the normal Buddhist and other designated holidays. No different from any other school.The local school in my village shuts for days on end whenever it wants.

The standard tuition fee for nursery and kindergarten is 3,500bt a term (higher than for the older children since more than 1 teacher is needed to care for the youngsters. To this you must add lunches, transport if required, and the compulsory insurance against accidents.  Uniforms are an additional cost, but certainly the older children are provided with a set of uniforms free by the government. Books are also provided free of charge  All in all it could cost up to 6500bt a term. But you would have to feed your children wherever they were!

I am sorry you feel disillusioned by the school. Having seen the alternatives available locally, and had a child at an international school in the past I am more than satisfied, and I have 2 happy and contented children.

We must have a chat over a beer sometime

Nick

[RichardH]

Nick
I seem to have answered your last mail in the wrong place on the website and it appears with funny photos.
I am still learning to surf the website properly actually so I am sorry for the blunder

Rich

[RichardH]

Nick

I apologize as it seems I stand to be corrected about the M1 class as I assumed it was the same as P4 or P% that do have a P4-1 and P4-2 as well as P5-1 and P5-2 and those classes do have the concerns I mentioned in my last mail to you but after you mentioning, I remembered the M1 class last term had only 25 students so I believe you are correct. As a matter of fact, the class size is about the same size for M2 and M3 which were also about 23 to 25 students. As you probably can tell, I am sort of walking lightly on the subject for personal reasons.

You are also correct about the nursery children eating at a different location than the other students BUT none of the students receive meals that are warm or hot. You may opt to visit their dining area at lunch time and view the area where the food is served room temperature every day, whether it is rice, soup or whatever but that is not really a big deal, just a mention.

When I inquired about my daughter last term I was told a price of about 5,700 baht and I believe that was per term give or take a couple hundred baht....don't recall exactly.

In regards to the ridiculous number of days without class, well I guess Thailand as a whole wins that award. Without the gov't holidays, teacher meetings or seminars, sports day, weekly scout day, school projects, so-called preparation by students for testing or exams whether its a national or provincial occurrences which might be more of a school beautification program, and numerous other opportunities for the teachers not to work, the kids still seem to be in class less than they are in neighboring countries and it doesn't seem that will change anytime soon...well, not in public and some private schools anyway.

Obviously, we can't be so particular, as the opportunities to choose schools in the area is very limited and only 1 private school in Pakhon Chai exists without any educational competition so hopefully things will get better.

Rich

[RichardH]

After reading this post from last year, it kinda sums things up:

Isaan being failed by inequalities in education system
The Nation 2011-07-28

Politicians are ignoring long-term solution to Northeast's poverty trap

Waves of both good and bad news have swept through the Thai education world this month alone. These realities reflect not only the inequitable structure of our national education policy but also the lack of attention authorities have paid to the field.

First the bad news. The latest survey by the Mental Health Department reveals that the average intelligence quotient (IQ) of Thai students aged six to 15 is 98.59, a little lower than the world's median average of 100. Children in Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan have, on average, a higher IQ.

Frankly speaking, this simply means that Thai students are of lower intellectual capability at best, and even less capable than their peers in those countries at worst.

By region, students in the Northeast had the lowest average scores, with 95.99. In the South, students did a bit better, scoring 96.85. On average, Northern students' scores were 100.11 while students in the Central region achieved 101.29. Students in Bangkok averaged 104.5.

Of 72,780 Thai students surveyed, 6.5 per cent qualified as having intellectual disabilities, because their IQs were lower than 70.

The second piece of bad news came on Monday, when 200 students rallied in front of the Faculty of Mass Communication at the prestigious Chiang Mai University, demanding that the faculty's dean step down following her alleged poor management. Not long before that, a similar protest occurred at the same university's Faculty of Education, resulting in the removal of its faculty dean.

Now, three pieces of good news.

First, a team from King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) marched to victory early this month at the World RoboCup Rescue 2011 contest in Istanbul, making Thailand the champion in the field for six consecutive years now.

Then, five Thai high-school students mostly from Bangkok scooped medals at the 42nd International Physics Olympiad, with one gold medallist (also from Bangkok) earning the highest score ever for Thailand.

And third, Thai students won 99 medals including nine golds at the International Mathematics Competition 2011 (IMC) and the World Youth Mathematics Inter-City Competition 2011 held recently in Bali. The majority of these medallists were from schools in Bangkok.

These five events furnish three conclusions on the state of our education system: Bangkok students seem the best educated; students countrywide don't have equal opportunities in education; and there is something wrong in our education system.

As shown by the first piece of bad news, students in Bangkok have the highest IQ score. Needless to say, Bangkok has the best schools and other education facilities. That the lowest IQ is seen in Isaan is no surprise - and it's not because children there have brain cancer, but because there are simply not enough decent schools, libraries, teachers and education funding, which children in Bangkok have easy access to.

In principle, this is a less an education than a political problem.

It's easy to name MPs who have big houses or big plots of land in the Northeast, and even easier to see how many MPs in Isaan send their sons for education abroad while children living in their constituencies within a 50 kilometre-radius of their luxury homes don't have a decent school to go to.

What's even more heart-wrenching is that it is the parents of these Isaan kids are the majority of the national electorate, instrumental in electing every government. But what Isaan people have received in return, in the way of education development from a series of governments, is too little too late.

Over the past 20 years, Isaan's primary schools have remained just as shabby. New emerging universities there lack both quality and credibility. The education authorities are currently deciding whether to shut down E-sarn University in Khon Kaen after it was rocked by a scandal over the sale of teaching diplomas.

Yet one fine day we see a series of road signs put up over a 100km stretch of highway leading to a birthday party of an influential politician in Isaan.

In the midst of all this, politicians are talking about issuing credit cards for farmers and raising their daily wages, as if these were "magic bullets" for curing poverty once and for all.

There's no serious talk about building quality schools, libraries and research centres in Isaan or elsewhere. We believe these are key to improving the lives of the masses and eradicating their chronic poverty in the long run.

This Thailand is nothing like Bangkok. And the capital remains the only serious education destination for every kid in the Kingdom. This is not fair.

What's fair is that children of the poor and the working classes, regardless of where they live, must have the same access to quality education as their counterparts in Bangkok.

[Vombatus]

Somehow, I can't see Thailand becoming an education 'hub'.


I am not directly affected by the education system in Thailand but there is no doubt that general standards (at least in our area) are poor. Couple that with an inherent lack of desire for advancement and you seem to have a recipe for disaster.

Learning is better than being taught.

Education is not everything but providing the best opportunity one can for our children (as constrained by finance, location, availability) is the duty of any parent - that is true of Thailand or our home countries.

[Prakhonchai Nick]

I suspect that the reason for the low IQ levels in Isaan children is related to the fact that very many do not have parents at home, to whom they can talk and ask questions. Old Grannies who take care of them probably had next to no education.

[RichardH]

For decades people have been devising tests that try to capture a person’s mental abilities in a score, such as an IQ test. With the average IQ being about 100 and hovering at that for students in school in Europe and America, I don't think it is all about IQ. People that seem to excel all seem to do it as a result of hard work and putting in the time to learn.

Unfortunately, with Thai kids, the quest for learning outside the school as well as inside just doesn't seem to be there.
They have not been taught the importance of self-achievement and do not hesitate as a rule to cheat just to get by. Schools often show each and every student as a good or better performer than they really are because they do not want to have the student "lose face" by going home with a less than satisfactory report card (so they say)...the real reason is that the school feels partly to blame for the lack of progress (as they should) and may not want the parents to remove the student who think their education will be better achieved elsewhere since this would mean losing the fees paid by the parent.   

So if most kids have an IQ that is not any better than these kids here in Isaan, what is the real reason and who is to blame that they do not learn. ?

[Nobby]

I suspect Nick reasoning is very near to the truth and this has proved to be an interesting and helpful thread. A good example of why a local forum is worthwhile.

Expats helping Expats

RESPECT 

[Vombatus]

For decades people have been devising tests that try to capture a person’s mental abilities in a score, such as an IQ test. With the average IQ being about 100 and hovering at that for students in school in Europe and America, I don't think it is all about IQ. People that seem to excel all seem to do it as a result of hard work and putting in the time to learn.

Unfortunately, with Thai kids, the quest for learning outside the school as well as inside just doesn't seem to be there.
They have not been taught the importance of self-achievement and do not hesitate as a rule to cheat just to get by. Schools often show each and every student as a good or better performer than they really are because they do not want to have the student "lose face" by going home with a less than satisfactory report card (so they say)...the real reason is that the school feels partly to blame for the lack of progress (as they should) and may not want the parents to remove the student who think their education will be better achieved elsewhere since this would mean losing the fees paid by the parent.   

So if most kids have an IQ that is not any better than these kids here in Isaan, what is the real reason and who is to blame that they do not learn. ?

Self achievement, self-motivation, desire to succeed (fairly) are all characteristics that are not naturally apparent.

Nick and I have observed the difference with say, Cambodian kids. They seem to understand the benefits of learning English, and 8 year olds in Siem Reap etc  can hold a conversation in English far better than most local Thai teenagers. A 22 year old girl working as a waitress for $3 a day could speak English, Thai and German !  Something is motivating them.


I guess that it is difficult for a  culture/religion, that puts it's faith in destiny, to find such motivation.

[Nobby]

Nick and I have observed the difference with say, Cambodian kids. They seem to understand the benefits of learning English, and 8 year olds in Siem Reap etc  can hold a conversation in English far better than most local Thai teenagers. A 22 year old girl working as a waitress for $3 a day could speak English, Thai and German !  Something is motivating them.

True, but it might be a better comparison to compare 2 tourist destinations as people living/working in these places have greater motivation to speak the language of the money providers.

Buriram,Isaan is no Pattaya/BKK or Siem Reip.
Ray or Nick, have you not heard the Thai's in Jomtien speaking Russian, yet???  Just for example! 

[Prakhonchai Nick]

Perhaps if they cut out all the Buddhist teachings (leaving that to the wats), there would be significantly more time to teach the kids a whole range of additional (and interesting) subjects. There might just be time to teach them some of the rules of the road pertaining to driving motorbikes, which will ensure a few more reach adulthood!

[Prakhonchai Nick]

Buriram province is surely one of the major breeding grounds for the Thai "tourism" industry!