Education for Thai children from villages

[cmmoo]

Good evening all,

 

Can anybody share with me how does the Thai education system work? Can a village child whose address is registered in the village study in a government school elsewhere for free? Or can they only attend the village school for free?

 

I have asked quite a few Thais but I received very vague answers. It seems they are not very clear on the situation either. The general consensus is that there is a cost ( not clear if they were referring to the cost of living) for a village child to study elsewhere from where they are from.

 

Thanks in advance for replies. Cheers!

[jackdd]

Afaik the general rule is that a child can only go to a school for free in the area where he/she is registered

In your post you said "village", so if you are talking about very remote places, where it's common that children stay with relatives to be able to attend school, because there is no school near their home: I think they don't enforce this rule, so the children can go there for free without being officially registered.

[BritManToo]

8 hours ago, cmmoo said:

Can anybody share with me how does the Thai education system work?

It's the same as nearly every other country in the world.

Each school has a catchment area, if the kid lives in the area, they can attend the school.

(Kid's name has to be in the house book)

 

It's never entirely free, they make you pay for books, uniforms and 'additional lessons'.

My 7 year old attends a local government school in Chiang Mai, and we have to pay around 4k every 6 months for the 'extras'.

 

After age 15, all bets are off, they can charge what they like and accept who they like, normally 2/3 of the students are told to leave.