The Equity Fund identifies the decline in Thai education as resulting from "policy discontinuity and frequent changes of ministers." It highlights eight innovations that sustainably address inequality and calls on all sectors to collaborate in successfully reducing educational disparities.
At 9:30 a.m. on 3 July 2026 at True Digital Park, Dr. Prasarn Trairatvorakul, Chair of the Executive Board of the Equity Fund for Educational Equality (Equity Fund), delivered a special lecture titled “8 Game-Changing Innovations for a Sustainable Future of Thailand’s Human Capital.” He stated that over the past eight years, there has been an effort to find answers to how every Thai child can access educational opportunities without anyone being left behind due to life constraints. Since 1999, Thailand has continuously sought to reform education through numerous laws and policies, but inequality issues have worsened and remain a major obstacle to national development. This stems from a lack of continuity in reforms and institutional mechanisms. He also revealed that since 1999, Thailand has had over 20 Ministers of Education, with each serving on average only 10-11 months. By comparison, Vietnam and Singapore had only 4-5 ministers in the same period. Frequent ministerial changes lead to policy shifts, as new ministers often suspend existing policies.
Therefore, the 2017 Constitution mandated the establishment of the Equity Fund to serve as an organization linking all sectors—government, private, and civil society—to jointly drive solutions. The Equity Fund operates based on data, empirical evidence, and high-quality research as its core. The organization’s main goal is to develop prototype innovations and create independent policy recommendations insulated from political changes.
Dr. Prasarn presented eight game-changing innovations for the sustainability of Thailand’s human capital, which include:
1. A data system serving as a fundamental platform linking individual-level data to identify and track the most disadvantaged children and youth from early childhood through the workforce stage, aiming to reduce data gaps.
2. Educational opportunity guarantees that allocate targeted budgets through poverty screening systems to ensure that extremely poor students have continuous access to education.
3. Thailand Zero Dropout, a national project aiming to reintegrate children who have dropped out of the education system back into learning, targeting zero dropouts by 2027.
4. Self-Developing Schools that enhance school management and learning quality through data platforms, such as the Q-Info system for individual student assessment, enabling schools to improve autonomously.
5. Local Teacher Retention addresses the issue of teachers from outside areas requesting transfers by selecting youth from remote communities to train as teachers and return to serve their hometowns, ensuring sustainability of education systems locally.
6. Flexible Education adapts educational formats to accommodate children’s life constraints, such as working to support families, through models like “One School, Three Formats” and the use of Learning Passports to certify learning from real-life experiences.
7. All for Education builds partnerships with the private sector and various stakeholders to mobilize resources and co-invest in educational development, reducing sole reliance on government budgets or donations.
8. Empirical Research uses research data and scientific evidence as a "compass" for policymaking, ensuring that educational investments are effective and address problems precisely.
However, despite empirical research being a key tool for evidence-based policy advancement, recent developments show that the Equity Fund's research budget has been cut drastically to a historic low. Dr. Prasarn compared this to "throwing away the compass while the ship is sailing in the middle of the ocean." The lack of support for this tool risks misdirecting evaluation and investment efforts aimed at achieving educational equity.
He concluded by stating that the success of driving innovations over the past eight years was not solely the Equity Fund’s achievement but a true "Butterfly Effect" resulting from genuine cooperation across all sectors. The greatest current challenge is creating sustainability for these educational innovations so they can continue without being tied to volatile annual budgets or government changes.
Dr. Prasarn therefore called on the legislature, private sector, and all societal sectors to collaboratively design systemic mechanisms—including legal, financial, and long-term policy frameworks—to make educational equity a sustainable shared goal and achievement for Thailand.
