LEARNING CURVE
Why Thailand's teachers are leaving faster than they can be replaced,
Sirikul Bunnag in Prachuap Khiri Khan
Teachers and students at Thap Sakae primary school are holding their breath because eight of their teachers are retiring at the start of the new semester early next month, leaving just 18 teachers to cope with 450 kindergarten and elementary students.
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| Kanchanarat Prasertying found it hard to say goodbye to her students during her farewell at the Thap Sakae primary school in Prachuap Khiri Khan. Health problems forced the 55-year-old to quit, leaving her 18 colleagues with 450 students. TAWATCHAI KEMGUMNERD |
Seven of the teachers have joined the early retirement programme, which let 8,955 teachers leave their classrooms before the age of 60 on Sept 30.
Another 3,077 teachers also signed on and are now waiting for a budget to be approved.
The programme is open to teachers nationwide who are over 50 or have worked for more than 25 years.
Applicants will get between eight and 15 months' salary, plus a retirement bonus of 200,000 baht.
The new early retirement programme will start in the 2009 fiscal year and finish in 2013.
"The remaining teachers are startled and fear for their future," teacher Amornrat sae Chai said.
"All the outgoing teachers are highly experienced and competent."
Teacher Duangporn Maneechote said she had previously taught arts to students in Pathom 1-5 (grades 1-5) for 13 to 15 hours a week. Next semester, she will be a supervisor in a Pathom 1 class and teach all subjects to students in the class, adding up to a 24-hour week.
School director Jirayos Kijkrong said the solution was to merge two kindergarten classes into one and assign arts, science and performing arts teachers to oversee a classroom and teach all subjects to students in their classes.
But despite realising there would be trouble when they left, the teachers who took early retirement insisted they had no choice.
Payom Pansuk, 58, said she was worn out after teaching eight subjects to Pathom 1-2 students. She said the curriculum kept changing and she could not keep up.
Kanchanarat Prasertying said she was one of three teachers who retired early due to health problems.
A car accident two years ago left her hip and legs broken and her liver torn.
She had to sit on a chair to teach, so the 55-year-old decided to call it a day.
Pitsanu Tulsuk, the director of the human resources development and legal affairs division under the Office of the Basic Education Commission, said the teacher shortage was due to the government's failure to approve replacements for the retirees.
The problem was intensified by the early retirement programme, which started in 2000. A total of 12,239 teachers left early, but only 2,118 new teachers replaced them.
In 2001, only 1,659 new teachers replaced the 9,449 early retirees. In 2002, 2,330 teachers took the places of 13,077 early retirees.
Now, in public primary and secondary schools, there is a shortage of more than 50,000 teachers.
After a break in 2003 and from 2005-2007, the programme launched for the 2008 fiscal year saw 12,032 applicants, but only 8,955 teachers were approved.
"We cannot resist the teachers' desire to quit. The applicants suffer health problems, are elderly or exhausted from working hard for a long period of time," Mr Pitsanu said.
"The early retirement programme aims to give teachers who are too tired, have lost the passion to work or face too many troubles to leave to reshape their lives, paving the way for others to step in," he added.
"But the problem is we did not have 100% of the replacements. The government asked the commission to fund new teachers. Each education zone is squeezing its budget to hire new faces."
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