Not a month goes by without another bribery or corruption story hitting the presses. It seems that a vicious circle is in operation for those who care about their pockets rather than the nation’s education. Graft in education is not new and happens in many countries around the world, not just in Thailand.

However, by putting several stories together, I can see how attractive it must be for certain individuals. If a parent wants a child to go to a popular government school where there are no vacancies, money exchanges hands to oil the wheels of industry. This is no small amount of money, sometimes it is in the region of 30,000 baht. The law is quite clear, there are to be no “donations” during the registration period; however, this practice still goes on.

Having passed the government examinations, a list is prepared showing the placements of the teachers who sat the examinations. For a not inconsiderable amount of money, up to 250,000 baht, teachers can adjust their places on the list and thus be able to teach at the schools of their choice. Money can exchange hands for transfers too.

At first, this would seem a lot of money to pay; however, if the money was borrowed, it could be repaid quite quickly with all the private classes that are on offer and regularly taken up by students that seem not to have learned enough during the daytime lessons. I have even been told of incidents where teachers have offered to give special attention to an individual during normal class time, for a fee of course.

And now, the most recent addition, that seems to put it all together. The Bangkok Post reported in December that a complaint had been sent to the Education Minister Jurin Laksanavisit concerning the selection panel of the Teachers Council of Thailand (Kurusapa). The complaint states that there was a lack of transparency in the panel selections of 178 of the 185 education zones in Thailand.

It transpires that bribes of up to half a million baht had been offered for seats on the panels totalling at least 80 million baht. So what is so important about these panels? Well, they have the authority to promote, transfer and increase the salaries of teachers, as well as taking disciplinary action against teachers and educational staff.

Prapas Chan-erb from the Issan Teachers Association who made the complaint believes that those who managed to pay their way onto the panels wanted to demand money from teachers wanting a transfer to another school as well as from teachers wanting to be education executives.
 

I have an idea that is pure fantasy, but I will share it with you anyway. In my opinion, the way to stop this is for parents to stop paying the initial tea money and extra classes. If this were to happen, then it is possible that teachers might stop paying for their placement into choice schools for the perceived increase in salary. After all, there would be no need to have so many extra after-hours classes if there wasn’t the initial loan to pay off.

If teachers stopped paying for their placement, then maybe individuals wouldn’t want to pay money to be on panels, so that they then can demand money for teacher placements to offset the initial payment to be on the panel and so on. Pure fantasy of course, it was just an idea!

Under or over the table, it doesn’t matter. It is only the colour of the envelope that changes around the world.
(Unedited article published in the Bangkok Post 9th March 2010)