Guidelines for Lifelong Education Management to Mobilize Learning Community

Introduction

Rapid changes in global society prompt Thai people and society to adjust themselves accordingly. Quality of education management is a key factor enabling people to adjust themselves effectively amid a number of changes in global contexts. With good quality of education management, people’s quality will also be enhanced accordingly. Human is the most significant resource for a country to enhance its competitiveness amid the rapidly changing world. Therefore, it is essential that Thailand give the top priority to human development so that Thai citizens possess high potential to compete in the international level. Thai people are expected to be both virtuous and clever as they are expected to act as social capital and help to develop the country to stand gracefully in the international stage (The Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board, 2012). Amid the educational change trend, the concept of lifelong education has been adapted as a guideline for the country’s education management to ensure that Thai people are given wide opportunities for lifelong learning. The lifelong education concept is also taken into account to build leaning society and allow society to participate in education management. The concept is a key driver for the country’s education reform that focuses on development of quality and standard of education as well as the learning of Thai people. Based on this concept, the education management focuses on development of learners, educational institutes, learning resources, curriculums and content designed under effective management, in order to broaden educational opportunities with high learning quality to cover all areas. Hence, the lifelong learning concept is expected to provide Thai citizens with lifelong educational opportunities and also encourage lifelong learning management collaboration among all relevant parties (Office of the Secretary of Education, Ministry of Education, 2009; Office of Education Council, 2009).

However, a number of problems linked to Thai education have been detached, with solutions urgently required. This is especially true for the case of education standard, educational management efficiency and enlargement of educational opportunities. Some problems include the lack of adequate freedom and flexibility in educational management for certain education agencies; insufficient educational services provided for disadvantaged people; lack of appropriate lifelong education contents and methods to facilitate educational achievement; and lack of regulation fine-tuning to facilitate-self learning. Given these problems, the lifelong education has yet to be merged into Thai ways of living. In addition, the society still lacks for collaboration in education management despite a law on promotion of informal and non-formal education being imposed as a mechanism to drive principles and the objectives of national education law (Charungkaittikul et al., 2012). The extent of learning transfers between the formal system and informal system remains rather low. The target groups for the Office of Non-formal and Informal Education (NIE) include a very large number of learners with varieties of learning needs or demand while the data base system for updated records of current learners and learning facilitators and supporters remains inefficient. On top of that, most educational personnel mainly act as education managers rather than promoters or facilitators of education management. Partnership networks lack of motivation and clear understanding of their roles (Office of Education Council, 2009). It should also be noted that lifelong education and non-formal and informal education are still facing a number of execution problems; for instance, the curriculum development remains unable to meet different demand of the target groups while the academic performances of learners under the NIE system still stay far below minimum standard (Office of Education Council, 2011 and Sangsri, 2014)