The Education Ministry plans to double its budget to support 5,000 schools in poor condition to reduce inequality in education.
Education Minister Teerakiat Jareonsettasin yesterday said he planned to increase the budget to support government schools nationwide that were lagging behind in quality of education and categorised by the Ministry of Education as "ICU Schools", from 500 million baht this year to 1 billion baht next year.
According to Mr Teerakiat, ICU schools are schools in such poor condition that they need to be put in "intensive care". Most of these schools have only one teacher, who is required to teach all subjects to students who don't have their own textbooks or stationery and are often too poor to even afford lunch.
Out of a total 30,000 state primary and high schools, about 5,000 fall in this category of needing "urgent and real help".
"This is an urgent mission. We have already helped some schools this year and I hope we are able to improve conditions in all of these schools by next year," he said.
Mr Teerakiat said his goal is to help those who need help the most first, as the huge gap between rural schools and their city equivalents keeps widening, and there is no solution in sight since the flawed budgeting system favours a small number of students at the top of the pyramid.
"Reversing that trend would be such an enormous task, but we need to do it to narrow the gap," he said. The minister said his "ICU Schools" project could sow the seeds of meaningful change from the ground up.
"I believe when the government reaches out to grassroots communities regarding the education sector and invests in human-resource development, improvements can be made. "If our efforts prove successful this year, we will expand them to more schools," he said.