Phuket school leavers must be dual-linguals to ‘break inequality’

The meeting, called the "Sema Coffee No. 8” roundtable, was held at Phuket Provincial Hall and chaired by Phuket Vice Governor Amnuay Pinsuwan.

Present for the meeting was Nutcharat Prasitthisilchai, Director of the Phuket Provincial Educational Area Office, along with school administrators and representatives from local university campuses, vocational colleges and business interests.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss strategies to drive the development of the whole education system and promote Phuket and to develop and promote Phuket as an “international education centre”, Vice Governor Amnuay explained.

The Cabinet had recently approved Phuket as an “educational innovation area”, Vice Governor Amnuay said.

“Phuket has 32 pilot schools in the project, which emphasises creating an education management system that is in line with the local problems and the needs of the people.

“We need to create an educational management system that is consistent with the problems, conditions and space requirements, and we need to emphasise that every child in Phuket must be able to speak more than two languages and solve the problem of inequality [in education],” he added.

Ms Nutcharat noted that her office was aware of 27 students in Phuket who will not be continuing their education after graduating from Mathayom 3 at the end of this school year.

Ten of the students wanted to enter vocational training, 10 others did not, and the remaining seven had yet to decide, she said.

Some of the students were considering continuing their education through the Non-Formal education system, she added.

Rasika Channarong, representing Phuket private industry, pointed out that at present there is high demand for workers with specific expertise in vocational skills, and practical skills demanded by the labor market

“In Phuket, there is a need for workers in the field of receptionists, spas, food and beverage services, etc. In addition, Phuket will need to increase efforts to create opportunities for vulnerable groups so they can train for occupations to feed the demand in the workplace.”

Earlier this month, Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew revealed that there were currently more than 17,000 job vacancies in Phuket waiting to be filled at more than 1,400 businesses on the island.

Job-seekers were urged to contact the Phuket Provincial Employment Office at 076-219660 ext 11-12 or call 083-6419990.