BANGKOK, 5 July 2013 Minister of Education Jaturon Chaisaeng is asking the responsible agency to consider alternatives to purchasing vans to shuttle teachers and students who lived in the vicinity of small schools slated to be closed down, as doing so would overrun the budget.
After a meeting with high-level ministry officials, Mr. Jaturon revealed he has tasked the responsible agencies with pondering the 8.65% excess figure attributed by the Education Ministry’s total budget proposal of 41.197 billion baht. Projects to be re-evaluated include the 2.4 billion baht initiative to provide tablet computers for Mathayom 4 students and the installation of high-speed internet at more than 30,000 schools that will require a budget of 5 billion baht.
Mr. Jaturon elaborated that he has assigned the Office of the Basic Education Commission to consider ways to solve the problem of small schools that provided sub-standard education due to inadequate facilities and instructors, without focusing only on the question of whether to close down the schools or not. He also told the OBEC to see to whether there were options to the buying of vans to shuttle students living near the small schools to the bigger schools farther away, saying that transportation coupons could be an option.
