Education Minister Instructs OHEC on Advanced National Education Test (Anet)
Education Minister Jurin Laksanawisit yesterday instructed the Office of Higher Education Commission (Ohec) to assist students who lost their right to take the upcoming Advanced National Education Test (Anet).
Jurin also urged the setting up of a centre where all provincial schools could gather students' complaints today.
Meanwhile, parents aim to petition the Administrative Court, the Civil Court and agencies against Ohec from Tuesday onwards.
The Anet, a criterion for university admission, will be held on February 28. The fee payment period was set from December 22, 2008, to January 14, 2009.
Following news that students were blaming a flaw in the barcode on the payment form provided by Ohec for their failure to pay the Anet fee on time, Jurin yesterday said he had instructed Ohec to divide the students who failed to make their payments on time in two groups. The first would be those whose failure was due to administrative errors, be it man-made mistake, Internet system or barcode system, he said. All these students must be helped to take the Anet test, he added.
The second group was those who failed to pay the fee on time due to their own fault. He said Ohec will consider solutions to help these students, too.
About 20,000 students failed to pay the Anet fee this year, compared to 27,000 last year and 50,000 in 2007.
He said officials were still inconclusive whether the cause of this failure was due to the ministry's mistakes or the students'.
Meanwhile Ohec secretary-general Dr Sumet Yaemnoon insisted there was no problem with the Anet application system, payment system and schedule. He affirmed that if the students and parents could prove it was an Ohec system fault, Ohec would pay the students' Anet fees, but if other factors were found to be responsible for the problem, Ohec would have to discuss ways to assist the students.
He said Ohec would accept students' complaints today and tomorrow, from 9am to 5pm, while students in other provinces should be able to file complaints at provincial schools on Tuesday.
He said the Anet online application system was good, convenient and cut expenditure. He said Ohec would take care of students having such a problem, without affecting the 190,000 students who followed the procedure and paid their fees smoothly.
In the mean time, a parent - Supachai Laiklang - yesterday said that 100 unhappy students and parents would petition the police, the Civil Court, the Administrative Court, the National Human Rights Commission and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from Tuesday onwards.
Senator Rosana Tositrakul, who chairs the Senate committee on promotion of good governance, said she would invite Ohec, Jurin and the students to a meeting this week.
She urged the authority to allow some 20,000 students with the problem to sit for the test by extending the application period and fining the students for their delayed fee payment. Rosana said she would also look into the Anet fee collection because the payments from nearly 200,000 students amounted to Bt100 million but Ohec was still asking for a Bt500-million budget from the government.
Senator Siriwat Kraisin, who chairs the Senate committee on education, urged Jurin to investigate the Anet fiasco and find measures to prevent its reoccurrence. He urged all sides to discuss the problem in a meeting together and added that parents had the right to petition the Administrative Court whose ruling would be binding on all sides. He said the Senate committee would table this issue in its February 12 meeting to find long-term solutions and suggestions for the Education Ministry. He also revealed that the committee was studying an alternative, which will assess students' behaviour and attitudes, to the admission system and the previous university entrance system.
Another senator Somchai Sawaengkarn, who chairs the Senate committee on human rights, said he would raise with the government on February 13 the issue, because some 20,000 students losing their right to take Anet this year due to a payment problem was unfair and it violated their constitutional right to education.
Somchai said the ministry should bear the blame for not informing the students properly about the Bt500 fee payment and the barcode system error. Somchai suggested that the government should let the students take the test by extending the fee payment period. He warned that if these 20,000 students were obstructed from taking the test, the Education Minister would be regarded as acting against the Constitution and parents could submit a petition with 20,000 signatures to the Senate to oust the minister.