SHORTLY AFTER assuming office as education minister in December’s Cabinet reshuffle, Teerakiat Jareonsettasin introduced his first policy of helping schools in rural areas suffering quality problems get out of “intensive care”.

This ICU schools project will be carried out in parallel with the “magnetic schools” project, which encourages parents to send their children to good-quality – albeit not-so-large – schools near their homes and covers more than 15,000 small schools throughout the country.

The ultimate goal of the ICU schools project is to tackle the problem of educational inequality, according Teerakiat, who is a medical doctor and former deputy dean of Khon Kaen University’s Faculty of Medicine. He had served as deputy education minister before his current appointment.

Many school administrators may be reluctant to bring their schools into this project, as its might suggest theirs are in a severe condition. But Prasert Patchotchai, director of Tao Ngoi Pattana Suksa School in the northeastern Sakon Nakhon province, is not one of them.

Prasert admitted that he was initially hesitant and worried. However, after studying the project in detail, he found that it would benefit his school and help it solve its urgent problems, with the help of relevant agencies. So he decided his school should join the project.

“I am not afraid that the school’s image will be bad [after joining the project]. As a school administrator, I saw problems that are ‘illnesses’ of the school. When you are ill, you need to be treated. We have to be open-minded and dare to fix the problems to make things better,” Prasert said.

His school is one of more than 6,000 selected by the Office of Basic Education Commission to take part in the ICU project. It is the only secondary school in Tao Ngoi district, where most residents are in the farming sector. Tao Ngoi is 18 kilometres from Sakon Nakhon town (Muang district).

The latest annual evaluation found that the school needed to improve its quality urgently, particularly involving its students. Prasert said many students were found to lack eagerness in studying and analytical skills. Also, many of the children were found to come from troubled families, which in turn adversely affected their academic achievements.

Most graduates opted to enter the labour market or work in farming rather than go to university. However, due to a lack of vocational skills and proper guidance, several of them failed to find well-paid jobs, according Prasert.

The school’s Grade 12 students also fared poorly in the Ordinary National Educational Test (O-Net). Its average score for Thai Language in the 2015 academic year was 41.38 per cent, compared to the national average of 49.36. In mathematics, the school’s average was only 20.42 per cent, compared to the national average of 36.59. In science, the school’s average was 28.95 per cent, while the national average was 33.40.

In order to treat this “ICU school”, the plan calls for improvement of its students’ quality in many ways, starting from the upcoming 2017 academic year, said Prasert.

The “active learning” method will be adopted to encourage more student participation and “learning by doing”.

The school also will offer vocational courses for its higher-secondary school students (Grades 10-12), while a group of local business people have offered to give lectures – and their career success could hopefully inspire the students about their future plans, Prasert said.

The school also plans to have language labs for English and Mandarin to help improve the students’ foreign-language skills, he added.

In addition, there is a plan to boost the teachers’ morale by funding their participation in different teaching courses provided by the Education Ministry, at Bt10,000 per year for every teacher.

The school also will use more IT in its teaching and learning processes. Its library will be modernised and equipped with high-speed Internet and electronic tools such as smartphones.

“What the school expects from this project is for our students to get more knowledge and vocational skills while gaining inspiration for their future careers. After graduating, the students should be able to add more value to their families’ current career in the farming sector,” Prasert added.