This paper was commissioned by UNESCO and is part of Costing and Financing SDG4-Education 2030 in the Asia-Pacific Region Project. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and should not be attributed to UNESCO. This paper can be cited with the following reference: Punyasavatsut, C. 2022. The Financing of Education in Thailand. Paper commissioned for Costing and Financing SDG4-Education 2030 in the Asia-Pacific Region Project. © UNESCO 2022 This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo). For further information, please contact: [email protected] Chaiyuth Punyasavatsut1 Introduction Since the adoption of the Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Education 2030 Agenda) by UNESCO Member States in 2015, the financing of education has remained a topic requiring concerted attention. The Education 2030 Agenda recommended national education expenditure of at least four to six per cent of the national GDP, or fifteen to twenty per cent of the national budget.1 Precise and all-encompassing finance data is essential to monitor spending efficiency and to account for the allocation of financial resources. Education financing is typically administered by a national ministry of education, and in decentralised governments its subnational bureaus of education. However, other sectors and ministries, such as labour-, health-, children, women- and other welfare and resources-related organizations contribute to education finances. Being able to discern spending of each governmental institution with a stake in education financing, for each education level – for all students, for the entire teaching force, as well as for the physical education infrastructure, for example ICT, WASH – it is important to develop credible, traceable and feasible education policies and plans. Many Member States face organizational challenges in accounting the spending on education across all ministries, for all subnational administrative levels of government, as well as among their populations’ households. To address shortcomings in education financing under the Costing and Financing SDG 4 - Education 2030 in the Asia-Pacific Region programme, UNESCO Bangkok with technical advice from the regional office of the UNESCO Institutes for Statistics (UIS) and financial support from the Korean Funds-In- Trust (KFIT) seeks to strengthen the capacities of its Member States in financing of SDG 4. For this purpose and with the help of national experts, research was conducted and data collected to understand the national education finance situation in multiple countries. In the outcome, a series of case studies were developed to provide insights into education finance structures between 2015 and 2020 for the following countries in the Asia-Pacific region: • Bhutan • China • Fiji • Indonesia • Mongolia • Nepal • Philippines • Solomon Islands • Thailand2 1. Objective and methodology The objective of the project is to capture practices and procedures in national education financing, as well as to provide an overview of the situation since the adoption of the Education 2030 Agenda. Each case study intends to capture the allocation of education finances for each education sector – in relation to national spending, by households, as well as on a per-pupil and teacher salary basis where available – in order to support policy decisions relevant for national agendas as well as the Education 2030 Agenda. Extensive desk research of national laws and regulations addressing issues related to education costing and financing as well as of reports covering data collections and analyses of education budgets and expenditures have been conducted by national consultants. For example, government budgets were collected from annual budget regulations, whereas government expenditures were generated from publicly available sources, such as a national statistical office. Data on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), population trends, as well as on enrolments, were compiled from available national statistics as provided by a national statistical office and a ministry of education respectively. When needed, direct meetings were held with officials from finance and education departments to provide technical support in understanding and compiling the relevant finance data. Specific to Thailand, statistics reported in the National Education Accounts (NEAs) provide information on Thailand’s education finance over the last decade by compiling data from the Ministry of Finance (MoF), the Bureau of the Budget, household socio-economic surveys by the National Statistic Office, the Revenue Department, the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Ministry of Interior (MoI) and other relevant departments for education, such as the Equitable Education Fund and the Student Loan Fund.1 1 To access the NEA, visit the Equitable Education Fund (EEF) at: https://research.eef.or.th/nea/ 2 Basic education in Thailand comprises six years in primary; three years in lower secondary; and three years in upper secondary. 2. National education finance procedures Governance structure Thailand’s central government establishes laws, legislation and budget allocations for pre-primary to upper secondary education levels. From these regulations, each education institution is autonomous in its day-to-day managerial and financial affairs. The local administrative organizations play a key role in funds allocation at the school level, with autonomy in their budget allocation to provide essential community services in education. Basic education2 is administered primarily by the central and local government authorities. In 2019, MoE played the leading role in public education provision, being responsible for seventy-seven per cent of the number of students in the formal and non-formal schools’ system, from pre-primary to tertiary education, including doctorate students. MoI, through its administrative arms at the local government level was responsible for six per cent, with the private sector covered the remaining seventeen per cent, predominantly accounting for a significant proportion of pre-primary and primary education (Office of the Permanent Secretary for Education, MoE, 2020, p.22). Within the MoE, basic education is administered by four main central offices: (a) The Office of the Permanent Secretary; (b) the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC); (c) the Office of the Vocational Education Commission; and (d) the Office of the Private Education Commission.3 The main central offices are responsible for formulating basic education policies, work plans, educational standards, core curricula, resource mobilization, monitoring and evaluation, and teaching innovation. Under the jurisdiction of OBEC, education service areas offices are responsible for overseeing, monitoring, and evaluating public schools, as well as coordinating and allocating budgets to schools in their respective area. The Office of the Permanent Secretary oversees regional education offices and provincial education offices to ensure the provision of equal access to basic education throughout the country. Regional education offices are responsible for promoting and implementing educational strategies by working closely with ministries and provincial education offices. 4 Provincial education offices are responsible for coordinating with public agencies involved with primary to upper secondary educational service offices in each specific province and school under the supervision of the Bangkok Administration Authority, local administration 3 In 2019, the MOE had eight-plus offices with a total of 693,138 personnel, in which 595, 929 personnel worked for the four main offices. 4 In 2017, there were eighteen regional education offices to administer eighteen provincial clusters (each of which is composed of four to six provinces). Good practice The NEAs have catalogued the expenditure data of all financial sources in Thailand since 2008. They also offer a breakdown of resource spending by public and private sectors, education levels, and, in some aspects, by income classes and provinces – making them a good practice in finance monitoring and reporting. The NEAs take expenditure from three primary sources, namely the central government, local administrative organizations (provincial, municipality and sub-district authorities), as well as the private sector (survey sources covering households, business sectors, NGOs). In addition, the NEAs also provide related information about learning outcomes and they disaggregate statistics by region.3 organizations and border patrol police schools (Office of the Permanent Secretary for Education, MoE, 2017).5 At public schools, the school principal is responsible for academic standards, personnel, financial management and general affairs. Each public school is monitored by a board consisting of representatives of teachers, parents, community, alumni and scholars. In 2019, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) was established to oversee both public and private tertiary education. MHESI is responsible for academic standards, monitoring, and evaluation of public and private universities. Since 2003, public universities are independent legal entities with autonomy over their education programmes. They can receive funding from MHESI. Both private and public universities manage their own affairs with administrative support in policy-making from the Council of University Presidents of Thailand and the Association of Private Higher Education Institutions of Thailand (Department of Education, n.d). Statutory regulations The 1999 National Education Act and the Constitution from 2017 define the education sector budget allocation for both public and private basic education schools (Office of the Council of State, 2017). The Act stipulates that schools should be financed on a per-student basis and that financial management should be decentralized under the premise of all Thai citizens’ equal right to receive a minimum of twelve years of free quality basic education. The 2017 Constitution also stipulates that a fund is established to address inequities in education and to support children’s education negatively affected by insufficient means. The result is the creation of the Equitable Education Fund (EEF) in 2018. EEF is the central mechanism for equitable and inclusive access to education. EEF is mandated to propose how the education sector should budget to ensure equity goals. To overhaul the education system, the National Education Act was revised, alongside the introduction of the 2017 Constitution Law. These new education statutes came about to implement multiple reformation agendas and to improve education system quality. Included within these laws was the reform of teachers’ careers, with attention focused on MoE’s management structure. Furthermore, financial reforms were introduced to guarantee that public schools had a minimum budget for the delivery of a standard quality education, while also providing schools with more autonomy regarding their financial management. Per-student funding for basic education to schools started in 2002, replacing the historical-based school financing method (line-item-based budgeting). Per-student subsidies only cover school operating expenses. Personnel expenditure budgets are allocated separately to the 5 In 2017, there were seventy-seven provincial education offices. Education Service Area (ESA) Offices based on the number of personnel at the school level. Capital expenditures are given based on identified priorities and necessities. Education budgeting The government finances both public and private education schools from pre-primary to upper secondary education.6 MoE applies a per-student, or per-capita subsidy formula to fund schools for their non-wage operating costs (Table 1), which excludes personnel and capital expenses. Teachers in public schools are civil employees and deployed to public schools as per a teacher regulatory framework established by the Office of the Teacher Civil Service and the Educational Personnel Commission. Table 1: Exemplary subsidies from the Free Education Programme. (Million THB) Components 2019 2020 Learning & teaching activities 22,859.47 22,596.16 % 60.5 60.7 Books 5,162.59 5,062.02 % 13.7 13.6 Student uniform 2,731.77 2,665.73 % 7.2 7.2 Learning materials 2,617.59 2,561.94 % 6.9 6.9 Student development activity 4,425.18 4,317.92 % 11.7 11.6 Total 37,796.60 37,203.76 Source: OBEC (2019). The per-student subsidy reflects the estimated cost of education delivery, differentiated by level and types of education. Subsidizing education to alleviate the burden on households covers fifteen years of education, beginning at the pre-primary education level. The funding formula consists of the following main components: a) Basic allocation. The basic per-student funding covers school operating costs associated with teaching and learning activities, including schoolbooks, learning materials and student uniforms. Common to all schools, the subsidy seeks to promote horizontal equity and represents the largest share of school budget allocation. b) Additional curriculum allocation to enhance education quality. The additional funding aims to improve 6 Each financial year, budget reports are combined by the Bureau of the Budget for the Royal Thai Government (RTG). Free Education Programme (FEP) Initiated in 2009, FEP extended basic education to include three years of pre-primary education, thus providing fifteen years of pre-primary to upper secondary education, including a vocational track free of charge for both Thai and non-Thai students in public and private schools.4 student access to IT, as well as outside classroom activities. c) Supplementary allocation for students in need. This additional component aims to promote vertical equity for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. d) Supplementary allocation for small schools in need. This last component supports operating costs for small and isolated schools facing a lack of scale economy. The LAOs’ budgets also use a per-capita formula. Some of the LAO budgets are used, for instance, to establish child development centres and to provide school meals to all students in their service areas. LAOs’ spending on education comes from their tax revenue and retained earnings. The LAOs can add extra funds to schools in their service areas, depending on their policy agenda and revenues. For example, to help with the provision of school milk and lunches. For tertiary education, the policy council creates a higher education fund, which MHESI submits to MoF and the cabinet for approval. The funds are used for creating high quality graduates to support national development, drive the growth of new industries, develop scientific and educational excellence, and encourage lifelong learning7. The National Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Policy Council approve the budget for each year to improve tertiary education. The majority of the budget will be earmarked for salaries of personnel and operational costs, for example, more than ninety per cent for 2022. The remaining amount goes towards fostering student talent in response to the country’s needs.9 Public universities receive government subsidies to fund specific programmes. Private universities do not receive research and development funds and are independent when setting-up their programmes’ fees, which is why their tuition costs are higher. Budget reporting The budget appropriation for central government agencies, for example, MoE, MHESI, is reported in great detail; whereas the budget appropriation for the LAOs (provincial, municipality and sub-district authorities) only report the total amount with a cost disaggregation. Due to the large numbers of LAOs in Thailand and a lack of a detailed monitoring and reporting system, education expenditures are challenging to estimate.8 3. Aligning financing of education with the Education 2030 Agenda – SDG4 7 NXPO. 2021. Policy council endorse 117.88 billion THB for FY 2022 higher education budget. 11 February. Access: https://www.nxpo.or.th/th/en/6998/ 3.1. Has education financing been aligned with the Education 2030 Agenda? The national budget and expenditure trend Figure 1: Total government budget, expenditure, and GDP, 2015-2020 Source: Thailand Government Spending (n.d.), Thailand National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). Thailand’s national budget saw a 2.4 per cent increase for its public services – with the same increase for expenditures from 2015 to 2020 (Figure 1). In total numbers, budget and expenditures are closely aligned, with expenditures consuming ninety-one per cent in 2019 and ninety-two per cent in 2020 of the available state budget. Thailand’s GDP also increased by 3.2 per cent in the same time period, showing a more rapid increase, yet seemingly unaffected by the impacts of the international COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In 2020, the country’s GDP exceeded government spending six times. Figure 2: Public education budget and expenditure, 2015-2020 Source: Thailand Government Spending (n.d.), Thailand National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). As seen in Figure 2, spending on education tended to exceed the planned education budgets between 2015 and 2019, suggesting a higher financial resource demand or unaligned financial planning in the aftermath of reorienting the national education plan towards the Education 2030 Agenda. Education expenditure henceforth decreased from 2015 to 2020 by 26.1 per cent, alongside a decreasing education budget (by 7.6 per cent), bringing expenditure and budgeting to similar amounts in 2019 and 2020. 8 LAOs’ education expenditures detailed in the NEAs reports. - 5,000,000 10,000,000 15,000,000 20,000,000 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 M ill io n TH B Total Budget Total Expenditure GDP - 200,000 400,000 600,000 800,000 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 M ill io n TH B Public Education Budget Public Education Expenditure5 The share of education of GDP and total government finances In relation to GDP, both the public education budget and expenditure decreased between 2015 and 2020 (Figure 3). In 2016, the public education budget undercut the minimum threshold of four per cent of the GDP recommended in the Education 2030 Agenda and Framework for Action and the expenditure undercut the same threshold in 2017. In 2020, the budget was recorded at 2.8 per cent and the expenditure at 3.4 per cent of national GDP. Comparing the education budget and expenditure to the total government budget and expenditure, both decreased by 5.3 per cent and 7.7 per cent, respectively. With a 15.4 per cent share out of the total government budget, the public education budget was slightly below the recommended minimum sixteen per cent in 2020. The public education expenditure was 20.4 per cent, slightly above the maximum twenty per cent as recommended by the Framework for Action. Nevertheless, the approximate alignment suggests efforts to align national education financing to align to the set recommendations. Figure 3: Public education budget and expenditure compared to GDP (top) and total government budget/expenditure (bottom), 2015-2020 Source: Thailand Government Spending (n.d.), Government Finance Management Information System (GFMIS) of Thailand, e-LAAS (2018). 3.2. To what extent are education finances distributed? The proportion of recurrent and capital costs 9 'Recurrent' refers to are all types of finances on goods and services (including wages and salaries, employer contributions, etc.), interest payments, subsidies and financial transfers. 'Capital' refers to all types of Figure 4: Proportion of recurrent and capital shares in public education financing, 2015-2020 Source: Thailand Government Spending (n.d.), Thailand National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). Thailand’s education finances are primarily recurrent in nature and remained high in share over the years. From 2015 to 2020, the proportion of recurrent budget and expenditure was consistently above ninety per cent (Figure 4). Finances related to capital are consequently between at most ten per cent, and six per cent as the lowest.9 The share of teachers’ salaries Figure 5: Share of teachers’ salaries in total education expenditure, 2015-2020 Source: National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). The total amount spent on teacher salaries decreased from 2015 to 2020 by ten per cent. However, the share of teacher’s salaries in the total education expenditure remained at the same level in 2020 with 67.5 per cent, as it was in 2015 (Figure 5) – despite a marginal drop to sixty- three per cent in 2017. Out of the public education’s recurrent expenditures, teacher salaries took the greatest share with about two-thirds. The current teacher career structure entails high public costs. Teaching personnel expenditure is followed by cost arising from subsidies and finances for the acquisition and maintenance of fixed capital assets, stock, land or intangible assets (real estate related). 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Sh ar e ou t o f G D P (% ) Public education budget Public education expenditure 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020Sh ar e ou t o f t ot al g ov er nm en t bu dg et /e xp en di tu re (% ) Public education budget Public education expenditure 93 92 93 91 90 9091 92 94 92 92 91 7 8 7 9 10 109 8 6 8 8 9 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 B ud ge t E xp en di tu re B ud ge t E xp en di tu re B ud ge t E xp en di tu re B ud ge t E xp en di tu re B ud ge t E xp en di tu re B ud ge t E xp en di tu re 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Pr op or tio n (% ) Budget, recurrent Expenditure, recurrent Budget, capital Expenditure, capital 0 20 40 60 80 100 - 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Sh ar e (% ) M ill io n TH B SPENT Teacher Salary Share of Teacher Salaries in Public Education Expenditure6 general operations cost (Office of the Permanent Secretary, National Education Information System, n.d.). The number of teachers/personnel has been decreasing in recent years. The decline can be explained by multiple factors, including large numbers of teachers retiring, government limitation of teacher recruitment and replacement, and a diminishing birth rate. In 2020, the Office of the Teacher Council Service and Educational Personnel Commission announced the revision of teacher allocation criteria used over the past eighteen years. The former criteria relied on the pupil-teacher ratio alone to allocate teachers among OBEC schools. The new criteria is expected to employ fewer teachers but with better deployment, particularly for small schools. A recent study by the World Bank suggests consolidation of small schools through location networks and deploying more than 76,000 teachers to provide adequate teachers in OBEC schools10. Proportion of the education subsectors Figure 6: Proportion of education expenditure as percentage of total public expenditure, 2015-2020 Note: Lower and upper secondary expenditures are only combined for the total secondary available. Source: National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). Education subsector-wise, expenditure priorities rest in primary education, consuming on average one-third of education expenditure between 2015 and 2020 (Figure 6). Secondary education has a lesser priority, as indicated with the lower spending of about one-fourth for both lower and upper secondary education combined. It is widely acknowledged that each higher education level would be more costly due to requiring higher skilled teaching staff, as well as more costly teaching resources. The lower expenditure will be the result of an interplay, with lower enrolment numbers in secondary compared to primary education, and thus a lower per-pupil cost. However, the question is whether fewer students cause a 10 World Bank. 2020. Thailand: Advice on Narrowing the Learning Gaps Between Schools. Access: lower cost, or whether an underfinanced and therefore less attractive secondary education causes fewer students to continue their education. Furthermore, pre-primary education appears to be of least relevance in terms of financing, with a share of below ten per cent in 2020. The Constitution requires that basic education is free and accessible for all. Thailand therefore allocates most finances for compulsory education (primary and lower secondary). This also suggests that – despite the missing disaggregation – lower secondary education will have a higher expenditure than upper secondary education. The notable decrease in share of primary education can be attributed to the expansion of compulsory schooling from six years to nine years, with three more years at the lower secondary level and primary schools extending their services and teaching force to cover lower secondary education (Punyasavatsut. C. et al. 2020a). Figure 7: Public education expenditure by level as a percentage of GDP, 2015-2020 Note: Lower and upper secondary expenditures are only combined for the total secondary available. Source: National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). In relation to the country’s GDP (Figure 7) and focusing on pre-primary, basic and tertiary education students (Figure 8), the education sectors of greatest and similar investment are primary and secondary education, accounting for one per cent and 0.9 per cent of GDP, respectively. While a tertiary student receives the greatest expenditure coverage from the government, the total cost of tertiary education in relation to GPD is at 0.7 per cent lower than basic education. Pre-primary education has a mere share of 0.3 per cent of GDP. Primary education is the sector which has seen the largest reduction in expenditure. https://research.eef.or.th/sdm_downloads/thailand-advice-on-narrow- the-learning-gaps-between-schools 12 12 9 9 9 9 38 38 31 31 31 31 24 22 29 26 26 26 19 19 21 21 21 21 8 8 10 12 12 12 0.4 0.6 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Pr op or tio n (% ) Pre-primary Primary Secondary Tertiary Other education Not specified 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 1.9 1.8 1.3 1.2 1.1 1.0 1.2 1.1 1.2 1.0 1.0 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.8 0.7 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Pe r- pu pi l e xp en di tu re c om pa re d to G D P (% ) Pre-primary Primary Secondary Tertiary7 3.3. How much is invested in one student? Figure 8: Public education expenditure per student by levels of education, 2015-2020 Note: Lower and upper secondary expenditures are only combined for the total secondary available. Source: National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). Between 2015 and 2020, expenditure per student shrank for all levels, except tertiary education (Figure 8). Expenditure per secondary student decreased by almost half (forty-seven per cent); expenditure per primary student decreased by almost one-fourth (twenty-three per cent); and expenditure per pre-primary student decreased by one-fifth (twenty-one per cent). Apart from tertiary education, a primary student sees the greatest investment from the government, despite lower secondary and upper secondary level expectedly to be more costly, as already noted under Figure 6. Tertiary education stands out with an increase of one- fifth (twenty-one per cent) additional public expenses per student, indicating that tertiary education has the greatest priority in Thailand. Figure 9: Public education expenditure per student as a percentage of GDP per capita, 2015-2020 Note: Lower and upper secondary expenditures are only combined for the total secondary available. Source: National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). Distinguishing for per-student expenditure in relation to the GDP per capita indicates the relative cost per student in relation to the country’s economic productivity or income per citizen (Figure 9). With a rising GDP and a marginally increasing population, education expenditure results overall less costly by 2020 than in the previous years. While in secondary education the expenditure per student consumed 32.6 per cent of the GDP per capita or income per person in 2015, in 2020 the same expenditure consumed 13.2 per cent (a reduction of more than half). Despite a marginal increase of spending in the same level of education, the expenditure per student went down notably (Figure 7). The same developments are true for pre- primary and secondary education. Tertiary education only decreases marginally by two per cent from 2015 to twenty- eight per cent of the GDP per capita in 2020 which is due to the large expansion of per-student funding, alongside a reduction of tertiary enrolment rates. In short, apart from tertiary education, pre-primary and basic education is of lesser cost to the income per citizen in 2020 than in 2015. 3.4. To what extent do households contribute to financing education? The government is the major contributor to education funding, while households contributed one-fifth to finance education in 2015 and more than one-fourth in 2020. (Figure 10). Though basic education is free of cost, as per national regulations, households bear a significant proportion of education spending, including tertiary education. This is an increasing trend. Figure 10: Proportion of public and household expenditure in total education expenditure, 2015-2020 Source: National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). Breaking down household expenditure for 2020, most notably, tertiary education creates the greatest cost for households, with thirty-eight per cent of all education expenditure (Figure 11). The cost burden for basic education, as well as pre-primary education, is comparatively less, with pre-primary education accounting for the least expense. Basic education in total represents fifty per cent of all household education expenses. 44,224 34,619 52,399 40,181 66,755 35,349 61,393 74,678 0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 TH B Pre-primary Primary Secondary Tertiary 21.6 20.7 13.8 12.6 13.2 13.0 25.6 24.5 17.9 16.3 16.2 15.0 32.6 30.9 35.3 29.3 29.0 13.2 30.0 30.8 30.9 29.3 29.7 28.0 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Pe r- pu pi l e xp en di tu re c om pa re d to G D P pe r ca pi ta (% ) Pre-primary Primary Secondary Tertiary 21.2 21.4 22.8 23.3 26.6 27.5 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Pr op or tio n of h ou se ho ld ex pe nd itu re in to ta l e du ca tio n ex pe nd itu re Public Education Expenditure Total Household Expenditure8 Figure 11: Household expenditure by education level, 2020 Source: Thailand Government Spending (n.d.), Thailand National Education Accounts (NEAs) available via the EEF (2021b). The government has the greatest expenditure per student in tertiary levels and the least in pre-primary levels, with primary and secondary education in between. It would be expected that greater public financing at one education level would see a lesser cost burden for households at the same level. Yet, tertiary education causes a proportionally high cost for the government, as well as for households. Attending higher education represents a tremendous financial burden for poor households (Punyasavatsut et al. 2020a). 4. References • Bastagli, F. et al. 2016. Cash transfers: what does the evidence say? A rigorous review of programme impact and of the role of design and implementation features. July. Overseas Development Institute. Access: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57bafa91ed915 d1259000002/Cash_transfers_what_does_the_evidence_say_F ull_Report.pdf • CP All Public Company Limited. 2020. Creating Educational Opportunities, Creating Jobs, Creating the Future. Access: https://www.cpall.co.th/wp- content/uploads/2020/04/educational-support-en.pdf • Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Australian Government. n.d. Higher Education Thailand. Access: https://internationaleducation.gov.au/International- network/thailand/PolicyUpdates- Thailand/Documents/Thailand%20Education%20Policy%20Up date_HE_FINAL.pdf • EEF. 2021a. Annual Report 2020 Equitable Education Fund (in Thai). Access: https://www.eef.or.th/about/annual-and-action- plan/annualreport/ • EEF. 2021b. The National Education Account of Thailand (NEA). Access: https://research.eef.or.th/nea/ • Fiszbein, A. and Schady, N. 2009. Conditional Cash Transfer: Reducing Present and Future Poverty. The World Bank. Washington D.C. Access; https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2597 • Office of the Basic Education Commission. OBEC. 2019. Annual Report 2019 (in Thai). Office of the Basic Education Commission. Amarin Printing and Publishing. Bangkok. https://www.obec.go.th/archives/290290 • Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC), the Faculty of Economics, Thammasat University and UNICEF Thailand. 2017. Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15 Year Free Education Program. May. Access: https://www.unicef.org/thailand/reports/public-expenditure- tracking-survey-pets-15-year-free-education-program- kingdom-thailand • Office of the Council of State. 2017. Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand (unofficial translation). Access: https://www.constitutionalcourt.or.th/occ_en/download/article _20170410173022.pdf • Office of the National Education Commission and Office of the Prime Minister. 1999. National Education Act of B.E. 2542 (1999). Access: https://asean.org/storage/2016/08/Thailand184.pdf • Office of the Permanent Secretary. National Education Information System (n.d.). (in Thai). Access: http://mis.moe.go.th • Office of Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Thailand. 2017. Thai Education in brief: Education as a Spearhead to Break through the Middle-Income Trap. Access: https://www.bic.MoE.go.th/images/stories/pdf/thai_education _in_brief_2017.pdf • Office of the permanent secretary, Ministry of Education, Thailand. 2020. 2019 Education Statistics. Bureau of Information and Communication Technology. Access: http://mis.MoE.go.th/images/StatFiles/62/2562p.pdf • Parliament Budget Office. 2021. Budget analysis for the Fiscal Year 2020 of the Ministry of Education (in Thai). Access: https://www.parliament.go.th/ewtadmin/ewt/parbudget/down load/article/article_20191213151639.pdf • Punyasavatsut, C. et al. 2020a. Development of Thailand National Education Accounting Systems 2008-2019 (in Thai). Paper submitted to the Equitable Education Fund. • Punyasavatsu, C. 2021. Thailand: Education Costing and Financing, report submitted to UNESCO Bangkok (not publicly available). • Thailand Government Spending (n.d.) (in Thai]. Access: http://govspending.data.go.th/home?language=en • The World Bank. 2021. Health Nutrition and Population Statistics. Access: https://databank.worldbank.org/source/health- nutrition-and-population-statistics • UNDP. 2020. Human Development reports. Access: http://hdr.undp.org/en • UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 2021. Sustainable Development Goals. Access: http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=3734 • UNICEF Thailand. 2011. Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) on the 15-Year Free Education Program: Kingdom of Thailand. 11% 19% 31% 38% Total Public Education, 78% Total Household, 22% 2020 Pre-Primary Primary Secondary Tertiary9 Published in 2022 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France and UNESCO Bangkok Office © UNESCO 2022 This document is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this document, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository (http://www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en). Open Access is not applicable to non-UNESCO photos protected by copyright in this document and may not be used or reproduced without the prior permission of the copyright holders. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this document do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The ideas and opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. TH/DOC/IQE/23/005-THA10 Sustainable Development Goals Stay in touch [email protected] https://bangkok.unesco.org @unescobangkok @unescobangkok UNESCO Bangkok Office Section for Inclusive Quality Education (IQE) 920 Sukhumvit Road, Phrakhanong, Khlongtoei, Bangkok 10110, Thailand