The Education Ministry will introduce the O-Net Plus exam to bring back equivalency testing and evaluate the quality of teachers.
Education Minister Pol Gen Permpoon Chidchob said he would restore equivalency testing, hence the need for a benchmark to measure the levels of students' knowledge and skills.
He said the National Institute of Educational Testing Service's (Niets) Ordinary National Educational Test (O-Net) will provide such a benchmark.
The ministry is developing future plans for the test together with the Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec), the Office of the Teacher Civil Service and Educational Personnel Commission (OTEPC) and Niets, said Pol Gen Permpoon.
He said that a new version of the O-Net, or the O-Net Plus, could be applied in the future because the current version does not cover all of the eight core subjects. The new version will allow students to take the tests in additional subjects without having to retake the tests in those subjects they have already passed or taken.
Pol Gen Permpoon: Test not mandatory
The current O-Net comprises maths, Thai language, science and English.
According to the minister, the O-Net Plus is expected to be introduced in the 2024 academic year, but it will not yet be mandatory. The test will focus more on critical thinking skills.
Students will be able to choose whether to take the O-Net Plus test or not as it aims to help them to improve their skills and evaluate their learning achievements rather than pressuring them to get good scores to benefit their schools.
Pol Gen Permpoon said the O-Net Plus could be used to evaluate teachers and education personnel as well. For example, if students do not perform well in maths tests, that means the quality of teachers is not high enough. The O-Net is the basic national exam to test the knowledge, abilities and logic of Prathom 6 (Grade 6), Matthayom 3 (Grade 9) and Matthayom 6 (Grade 12) students using the Basic Education Core Curriculum's standards.
At present, test scores of the grade 6 and 9 students are not used to enter new schools. Only the O-Net result for Grade 12 students is needed when applying for university entrance examinations.
Meanwhile, the cabinet has acknowledged a proposal to restructure the Ministry of Education to have two separate offices for managing primary schools and another office for managing secondary to high schools.