The Situations and Problems of Educational Decentralization to the Local Government Organization in Southern Thailand

Abstract

This research aims to study the current situations of educational management systems and find the guidelines for educational management system development of transferred schools and Local Government Organization in Southern Thailand. The results found that: the problems of management are the instability of school transferring acceptance policy, which is according to the mayor; and insufficient budget for school administration. Student quality has improved after transferring from being under Educational Service Area (ESA) to Subdistrict Municipality because Subdistrict Municipalities promote academics. However, teachers lack of opportunity to participate in external training and development. Problems include: the policy is changing up to the Chief Executive of the SAO, schools have low authority leading to management inflexibility, the SAO has no educator, and educational policy and practice are impacted by local politics. The obstacles are educational policy is not seriously and continuously implemented, law and regulations are not supportive for practices, there is no educational supervisor and an insufficient budget. The guidelines are the Subdistrict Municipality should improve the budgeting system to match schools’ needs, and revise and update the relevant laws and regulations to allow teachers to be able to participate in the external training and development with expenses coverage, the SAO needs to urgently recruit competent personnel and teachers to work at the SAO and schools, provide schools with administration authority, and solve the local politics problem that intervene the school administration, the Department of Local Administration (DLA) should decentralize personnel recruitment and budgeting authority to the PAO, and the PAO should provide more administration authority to schools.