The Thai cabinet approved a 1.32-billion-baht fund today (Tuesday) to help ease the financial burden of parents whose small children are receiving pre-school education at child development centres across the country.

There are currently 660,318 pre-school children at 18,540 child development centres under the supervision of local administration organisations.

Each parent will receive a 2,000 baht subsidy to cover the expenses of each of their children who were, previously, not covered by the subsidy scheme originally intended for older children.

The inclusion of small children will bring the total number of beneficiaries from the scheme to 1,389,722 and raise the total funding to 2.779 billion baht.

Another 10 billion baht was allocated for university students, under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovations.

Students at private universities will each get 5,000 baht cut from their tuition fees, while students at state-run universities will receive a 50% discount for fees not over 50,000, 30% for fees above 50,000 but not more than 100,000 baht and a 10% discount for fees exceeding 100,000 baht.