抄録
In order to extend educational opportunities from the six-year primary to the nine-year lower secondary level. the Thai government implemented a new educational policy in which the secondary curriculum was to be provided free of charge at selected primary schools called Kayaioka schools. The national average of the proportion of children pursuing secondary education rose to 90.2% in 1996 from 52% in 1990 when the Kayaioka program was launched. This paper explores why and how such a dramatic expansion of secondary education took place in such a short period of time by use of a model which suggests that the level of development of the educational system is determined by the socio-cultural and the economic subsystem.
Data were collected by fieldwork in Yasothorn Province in 1996 and 1997. It was found that the average continuation rate from primary to lower secondary among graduates of the four primary schools under study was 25% in 1989. 35% in 1990. 38% in 1991. 37% in 1992. when a Kayaioka opened in one of the primary schools under study. 70% in 1993. and 95% in 1996. Close examination of this transition lead us to conclude that secondary education prior to the mid-1980s was in the elite stage described by Trow (1961), after which it rapidly progressed to the universal stage, following a short interlude at the stage of mass education.
Interviews with parents and their children revealed that: (1) Kayaioka played a decisive role in reducing difficulties involved in commuting a long distance by bicycle for many students. especially girls; (2) parents had been anxious to send their children to secondary school since the mid-1980s; (3) the establishment of Kayaioka generated the new concept that every child must go to a lower secondary school; and (4) traditional matrilineal households with uxorilocal marriages functioned to maintain the educational attainment of girls at an equal level to that of boys.
The present study offers empirical data with which to refine the model proposed by Craig and Spear (1982). What we observe is a shift in the meaning of secondary schools from being elitist institutions to being schools for everyone, which is found to be prerequisite to rapid expansion of secondary education. The development of the ideology of “secondary education for all” was facilitated by the new employment practices that were adopted by modern industrial sectors in Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s. This new concept of secondary schools is also underlined by socio-cultural factors such as the pre-existing cultural meaning of child-rearing centering around bankap maidai (not enforcing one's wishes on a child), an egalitarian village social structure, a family organization with minimal gender differentiation, and a village-wide campaign of “Let's go to secondary school.” The development of a new ideology related to secondary schools led to a rapid rise in enrollment.
