Starting on October 1, teachers of public schools will not be required to do general affairs work so they can focus on teaching, said Education Minister Thirakiat Charoensatthasilp at the mobile cabinet meeting in Chumphon province on Monday.
The meeting was also attended by directors of regional and provincial educational offices.
The minister told the meeting that the Education Ministry had set aside a fund, amounting to about 3 billion baht, to hire general affairs teachers who will focus on doing general affairs work at their respective schools and janitors for every school across the country under the ministry’s supervision.
Noting that the ministry is getting less budget since 2018 fiscal year, Mr Thirakiat said he had instructed the Office of the Basic Education Commission to scale down or scrap projects which are deemed not essential so that there will be fund to implement other projects which are more useful such as the project to improve the accommodation for teachers.
He said about 20,000 teachers are due to retire this fiscal year and, within ten years, about 200,000 teachers will have to retire and replacements will be hired and these new teachers need accommodation.
He said he had instructed the Office of Basic Education Commission to conduct a survey about the accommodation for teachers, to find out how many of them need to be repaired and how many more housing will be needed to cope with the demand of teachers.
The minister told his audience that he did not intend to woo their votes because he is not a politician. But he warned that newcoming administrators who are politicians will try to change or scrap the projects that were done or being done by the current administration to improve the livelihood of the teachers.
He urged the teachers to protest the politicians if the latter intend to scrap the useful projects.
