Homeschooling in Thailand

I don't know, if home schooling is legal or not. The main question is, if your child will later go to an university in Thailand or not. Universities in Thailand only accept students which have done the Thai curriculum.

We have just finished registering our children for homeschooling in Thailand. We opted to do this officially with the Thai government. This means that we can switch back into the standard Thai education system easily at any time, and our children will be elligible to sit the Thai university entrance exams if they so choose. While some will question the value of staying within the Thai system at all, the very best Thai universities, such as Chulalongkorn, can actually be very good value for money. As both of my children have Thai nationality, we felt that homeschooling legally within the Thai system was the best way for them.

If you want to follow the Thai regulations, you need to begin at the Office of Primary Education (or Secondary Education) in your khet/district.  You will need to submit a whole bunch of forms, along with a complete curriculum that complies with the education objectives and hours specified in the documents at the Office of Basic Education. (https://www.obec.go.th/)  This is a pretty grueling process, and everything is in Thai, so if you aren't fluent in Thai, find someone who is.

You'll need to create a school complete with a school name and get your facilities approved for class.  The government officers will come to your house and do a site inspection to ensure that there are sufficient resources to teach the children. They want to see large whiteboards or chalkboards, desks or other dedicated tables, a decorated classroom that stimulates learning, books and materials and other paraphenalia that indicates this is a genuine school.  During our site vist, they stressed it was very important we made the children sing the Thai National Anthem every morning when we began class.

Overall, homeschooling will result in an education dramatically better than any other option in Thailand, but it comes at the cost of a lot of work and dedication. If you think it is going to be cheap, think again. By the time you finish outfitting your classroom with things that government says you will need in order to get your facilities approved, you will find it is substantially cheaper to send them to a medium level private school. But the education they will receive at home is going to be much, much better.

Schools in Thailand have a propensity to be nothing more than glorified babysitters, and they emphacize marking time much more than actual teaching. It took us 3 weeks of intensive effort to complete the documents for homeschooling, and this included 2 nights of my wife staying up all night to write out curriculums that needed to be submitted the following morning. It was very stressful, but having completed it, I think it was very much worth the effort.

monomial wrote:

We have just finished registering our children for homeschooling in Thailand. We opted to do this officially with the Thai government. [...].

Overall, homeschooling will result in an education dramatically better than any other option in Thailand. [...] .

Thank you very much for the information about the legal issue!

But I don't agree, with your opinion, that home homeschooling is dramatically better than any other option in Thailand. The public schools are a mess, that is true of course.

Our son is in Beaconhouse Yamsaard Hua Hin since Kindergarden 1 and we very happy with the level of education there. He is now in P2 immersion program (75% English, 25% Thai) and the fees are reasonable (about THB 125,000 per year).

Another advantage of a school is that your child can train his social capabilities with other children and it is far more easier to make new friends. As a parents you also get the opportunity the met other parents and exchange your experience.

juehoe wrote:

Thank you very much for the information about the legal issue!

But I don't agree, with your opinion, that home homeschooling is dramatically better than any other option in Thailand. The public schools are a mess, that is true of course.

Our son is in Beaconhouse Yamsaard Hua Hin since Kindergarden 1 and we very happy with the level of education there. He is now in P2 immersion program (75% English, 25% Thai) and the fees are reasonable (about THB 125,000 per year).

Another advantage of a school is that your child can train his social capabilities with other children and it is far more easier to make new friends. As a parents you also get the opportunity the met other parents and exchange your experience.

Interesting. We pulled our children out of Beaconhouse Yamsaard Rangsit due to incredibly poor teaching and significant failure to perform. I would definitely not recommend them.

Our children attend many other activities and have ample opportunity to socialize, so that is not an issue for us.

I would guess some students can excel anywhere, and I think it is fantastic you have found a place you are happy with. But as a purely objective measure based on teaching performance, I definitely would not recommend medium level private schools in Thailand like BYS.

Hi Bhavna
I have no children in Thailand so i am not qualified to answer to your questions.
Hope can be useful in next queries.
Cheers
Alex

You don't need to register officially for homeschooling if your children are foreign nationals, because if they've never been in the system and are following a foreign curriculum then they are completely outside both the Thai system and the system of their home country. I know this for sure, having read the laws in both countries.
It's nice to have a classroom, but not essential. There are benefits to having a portable homeschooling system. Rather than just read about things, you can go out and see and touch them and do fun experiments and projects outdoors.
You don't really need to spend much at all. Education is about the transfer of skills, knowledge, and understanding, and money has limited impact on the achievement of those things... Parental support and interest has a much bigger impact.

What is probably a good idea is for foreigners in Thailand interested in homeschooling to talk to each other and help each other out, if they share similar outlooks. Engineers like me can teach maths, physics, computing, and Thai to iGCSE level or A-level, or at least share information.
You will struggle to find a computer teacher (who is actually qualified in computer science) even in a developed country school, and frankly my experience of British state schools is pretty close to babysitting too, with a constrained politicised curriculum, and a dearth of decent teachers.

I'm a single parent and  been living over here with my young daughter for almost 2 years, and never had any issues registering for home schooling or not yet.
But we have just been traveling around, at least before the corona virus, so not staying in any one place for more than a few months so that could be a consideration for you as well.

This post links to some groups that might be able to provide support: 

https://hslda.org/post/thailand#

I wouldn't even consider home schooling my own children related to the social contact being critical.  Of course that's just a personal opinion.