How long have you come to Wat Khok Thong School?

I have studied here since the second year of kindergarten. So it’s five years.

How do you like it here?

I like it. We have a big BBL (Brain-Based Learning) activity ground. The teachers are nice and good. I like my homeroom teacher, Teacher Mob, and my favourite activity is PBL (Problem-Based Learning). I get to find out answers and write them down. Sometimes we work alone, sometimes in groups, and write about things that we’re studying.

The term has just started. Now we’re studying about burners and ovens. The teacher asked us to think about what they look like and write the details down. We also think about what they are made of and their use. We can use them a lot to cook. I learned about different types of burners like gas stoves and charcoal burners. I know that we can cook food with them or burn trash. To burn trash, we will need dried tree leaves or twigs as fuel.

Jitta-sueksa is fun. Some days it’s fun, some days it’s boring. When it’s fun is when I get to draw, because I like drawing. And stories. I like drawing cartoons, like Ultraman, because I’ve watched Ultraman since I was very little. Jitta-sueksa lets us write and draw, and the teacher is kind. He gets angry sometimes when students don’t listen. I would listen to the teacher because if I don’t, I may not be able to catch up with the class and send my classwork in time. When the teacher asks something and I have an answer in mind, I would raise my hand. The teacher said to raise our hands when we want to speak. If not, no one will listen to us. I think I can still use this lesson when I grow up. When I grow up, I will listen to the question carefully and raise my hand before I say something.

If you have to choose between going to a big school and coming to this school that is closer to your house, what would you choose?

Coming to this school, because there aren’t too many students so it isn’t loud and crowded.

If one day you have to go to a different school, what do you think would be the impact on your life?

It would be tiring for my grandfather and he would spend more money on gas. My grandfather gives me a motorbike ride to school. It doesn’t take a long time to get here but it isn’t close enough to walk from home. I can’t ride a bike by myself because the road is too big. If students here go to a different school, this school would be left empty and there won’t be a good school like this anymore.

What can you do if you want to keep this school open?

I can go talk to the school director.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

I want to help my parents sell mushrooms. I think by helping them with calculations. How many kilograms we can sell, things like that, because I learned it in maths class. My parents usually sell the mushrooms to regular customers. And I help them pick fresh mushrooms on the weekends sometimes.

What would you like to say to adults?

I wish every school gets to stay open. Because some students live near their schools and if they don’t want to travel a long distance, they still get to go to school.

Located in Ratchaburi Province, Wat Khok Thong School is a small school of 102 students, teaching from kindergarten level to Grade 6.

Like 15,000 other small primary and secondary schools all over Thailand, Wat Khok Thong is facing the risk of closure and merger with a magnet school, after the Office of Basic Education Commission has issued a “most urgent” letter to directors of education service areas to begin considering closing and merging small schools in order to achieve budget efficiency.

In the official document dated 19 November 2019, there is no mention of improving the quality of public education in the long run, or the multidimensional social and economic impacts on students and their families.

Wat Khok Thong School, led by the school director Ms. Chanita Philachai, believes the voice of strong school networks and local communities, coupled with innovative tools and a strategic move to improve local education beyond the roadmap drawn by central authority, will help them win over a policy that views education through an economics lens – as a commodity that has to be worth the government’s per-head investments.