Thailand still holds the record for students spending the longest hours in classrooms worldwide, but the results are surprisingly the opposite. Thailand's scores on the international skills assessment PISA fall below the global average, while the vast amounts of money parents invest yield only skills that the job market does not demand, according to recent reports. Dr. Kande Leoypiroj , or Dr. Aor, the Democrat Party's prime ministerial candidate, issued a warning through the program Digital Frontiers: Special Talks #ChooseAgain on Thairath Money about Thailand's education system, proposing a roadmap to overhaul it—from unlocking teachers’ burdens to transforming the state into a facilitator—to prepare global citizens who can truly survive in an era where AI threatens every profession.
"Why is quality education so expensive nowadays?" is a question that reflects the deep-rooted inequality in Thai society, Dr. Kande Leoypiroj revealed. The problem of education expenses is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger crisis: education in an era where technology plays a major societal role. The submerged iceberg is the issue of “inequality” that is impacting Thailand’s education system.
The real problem found is that even though Thai children study hard, withWorld Population Reviewreporting in 2026 that Thailand is the country where children spend the longest time in classrooms—up to 9.5 hours a day—while countries renowned for education like Finland have children studying only 5 hours a day. Meanwhile, parents are willing to pay high fees to access the best education for their children, but the outcome is widening inequality and, ultimately, classroom skills that stubbornly do not match labor market needs in the AI era.
For many years, reports have consistently shown that Thailand's PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores, an international student ability evaluation, are worryingly poor. Dr. Kande highlighted a sharper point: the extreme inequality concealed beneath the numbers.
According to the 2022 PISA results reported byOECD,the scores in mathematics, reading, and science are all below the OECD average. Comparing within ASEAN, Singapore ranks highest in scores.
"We hear about some elite schools scoring even higher than the world's top-ranking countries, but those are small groups, while most schools in the country have very low scores that pull down the average," Dr. Kande explained.
These facts reflect that Thailand's education system is not just "not good enough" but is a "every man for himself" system: those who can pay access better opportunities, while millions of children are left behind with insufficient skills for future global competition.
A popular Gen Z term is "stubborn"—we use it as “skills stubborn to market needs,” meaning that despite Thai students’ hard study for four years at university, their skills end up unused by companies or replaced entirely by AI.
Dr. Kande explained that in the AI era, we cannot measure children's success by letter grades or GPA anymore because the real working world demands competencies such as communication, teamwork, and ethics—qualities that standardized tests cannot assess.
"We must shift from studying for degrees to accumulating truly market-demanded skills (On-demand Skills)," Dr. Kande said, proposing the concept of a Skill Wallet where students and workers accumulate credits from short courses taken anytime, which have practical application.
Besides students, teachers are often blamed as the cause of failure. However, Dr. Kande, a former lecturer, sees things differently: "Thai teachers bear excessive burdens—administrative tasks, documentation for career progression, school duty shifts, and even kitchen work—that prevent them from fully teaching."
Dr. Kande proposed three solutions:
Dr. Kande also proposed a Skill Voucher policy—not just financial aid but an investment allowing all Thai people to upskill or reskill with certified institutions, whether universities or global EdTech platforms.
He emphasized breaking down the "school walls" to create an open education system where students in small schools can access diverse electives from larger schools or external experts online. The government must stop "blocking" progress with outdated regulations and instead become a "facilitator" encouraging private sector involvement in designing modern curricula.
The world is changing faster every day, but is our system keeping up?
Education in the AI Era
The New Global Workforce
Digital Government
Digital Frontiers: Special Talks #ChooseAgain invites tech-savvy politicians from three parties
to understand the country’s shared challenges, identify problems, evaluate real solutions, and discuss how we all must adapt.
Watch all three episodes on YouTube: Thairath Money
11:00 AM
24 • 26 • 28 Jan 2026 GMT+7
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