Mr. Chadchart Sittipunt, Governor of Bangkok, presided over the opening meeting to present policies and educational focuses for the academic year 2024. He said that education is very important but is rarely talked about. Thailand or Bangkok cannot prosper if education is not good because people are the country’s resource. Bangkok is caring for 253,000 children. If they don’t have quality, even if we instill environmental sustainability or anything else, everything will not go forward. But, if people have quality, everything else can progress. Therefore, everyone in this room is very important to the future of Bangkok. They are the future of Thailand.

2 years ago, we gave great importance to education. We try to allocate funds to schools, try to oversee and improve processes. We believe this is the most worthwhile investment. One important trend in the future is that Learning will be more important than Education. The difference is that Education is learning from what others have prepared, but Learning is learning from ourselves. In the future, if they want to survive in this world, they must be able to learn by themselves. They must know how to “wonder,” “seek knowledge,” and “understand” things. Therefore, the atmosphere in the classroom must create more learning to expand further.

Educational development may have 4 issues.

The first issue is the physical aspect of the school, such as bathrooms, computer rooms, classrooms, and sports fields that meet standards.

The second issue is teachers because there is no way that education can be good if teachers do not have encouragement, including wasting time doing paperwork or not being important to students.

We have ideas to increase efficiency by simplifying administrative management and academic qualifications. 

The third issue is the curriculum, which all schools must be of similar quality and encourage students to study close to their homes. We believe that it can solve many dimensions of social problems. Children will have more time to spend with their parents and reduce traffic problems.

The final issue is parents because we believe that the primary parental context is important. We are working on ways for parents to be a part of their child’s learning process. All 4 of these are important matters that must be tried and developed together.

In this regard, the Education Bureau organized a meeting to deliver educational policy and focus points for the academic year 2024 to clarify educational policy and focus points for more than 700 stakeholders. The purpose is to jointly drive the development of education in Bangkok into practice to see concrete results and respond to educational policies from the Governor of Bangkok to create a model and perspective for organizing education in the same direction. It is also a preparation for further operations according to the policy.