What Does a School Year Look Like in Thailand?

Curious about the school schedule in Thailand?

...a Teacher-Training in Lampang.

August 2015

So this past July, I started a lovely cycling trip from the East (where I live) to Northern Thailand, with the destination being Doi Intanon - the highest point in Thailand.  Along the way however, I was going to be able to fund the trip through a week of work doing teacher training in Lampang.  The Thai government had ordered testing to be done of every teacher, English Proficiency Tests, and therefore a lot of extra studying was needing to be done countrywide (in every of the 77 provinces, scores were  at unsatisfactory levels).  I was able to benefit from this however, through being asked to help out in no less than 5 different provinces, and usually many schools in each province!  It gave me the chance to meet many, many new friends, and connect with fellow teachers from several different parts of the country.  Something I loved doing and would love to do again, but this is not something feasible on a normal working schedule...  So!  A great 2-month period of biking, teaching, meeting new friends, biking onwards, and repeating.

Specifically though, something very interesting happened in this location in Lampang, so I want to write it down.  This school had quite an impressive staff of teachers, I would say that the kids studying here are quite lucky compared to other places in Thailand, I would say the majority of teachers here actually cared to do their jobs, cared about the students, cared to further their own skills and work-related abilities... just a great group to work with.

University Students in Nakon Patom

They were all very attentive in each of our sessions together, I was able to learn quite a bit from them as well due to their great command of English, and I was even sad to leave!  Saying that we communicated well in English, I am meaning that of course I could communicate with all other groups too, its just that I would usually end up just switching to Thai by the end, after all the questions they wanted to ask/discuss were just too difficult for their own levels of English.  This Lampang group could handle a much higher level of discussion, and therefore much less pressure to speak correctly, and therefore more opportunity to just communicate freely on whatever the topic may be...  Speaking a language and really using a language can sometimes be very different, and people can have various skill levels in each.

Ok, so this very interesting topic turned out to be School Calendar Years, as differing between countries.  I went to school in Africa, but at a school that used a US curriculum, hired mostly US-born teachers, and so I could just use my own memory of our school year as a way to compare with the Thai school schedule...  England might be slightly different, Europe as well, but I think they all still follow the Late Summer to New Year, New year to Early Summer type school schedule.
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After adding up the days, really taking time to give a good comparison and not generalizing, we together came up with the following:

Thai School Year -
1st Term - May 15-Oct 6 (18 end-of-term workdays off, and 4 holidays during term)
2nd Term - Nov 1-March 22 (38 workdays off, and 7 holidays during)

Total days off out of possible workdays:  69 of 261.

US/International School Calendar Year -
1st Term - August 14-December 22 (11 workdays off, 5 holidays + 2 Teacher in-service days during)
2nd Term - January 7-May 29 (53 possible workdays off, and 7 holidays + 1 PT Conf. day during)

Total days off out of possible workdays:  79 of 261.



So, we can see the long summer break in the US calendar really allows for a long period of time away from school, time to visit family, a big chunk (huge chunk compared to really any other 'normal' job) of time for personal projects and still have a job to come back (time to do a cycling trip, or just be an athlete :) many amateur athletes are teachers during the day!, it definitely correlates well to the weather best for outdoor cycling...))

*Some additional information on life as a teacher in Thailand;
all teachers not working at private schools are called Ka Ratchagan, which means "I work for the crown."  In Thailand the crown and the government are still one and the same, and so in short, all teachers are government employees... this means that they need to sign their names for every day that they do not request off.  At least one teacher is required to be "on duty, on call" every day of the year.  The school will allow a representative (the janitor to sign their name in place of a teacher), but someone has to be responsible for the school grounds 24 hours a day.  Most schools are lenient with this during the long breaks, allowing someone else even to pay another employee to sign their name for another teacher (and hopefully also take over their duties for a time :) )... but they still have duties every day!!  I know that my friends in the US really are free, totally free in their 'free' time over summer.  This also can be used to highlight some interesting differences in culture as well, not just related to school... All Thai employees are really much closer to their respective places of employment, and employers, and this comes with many positive and negative things, reaching out into many aspects of their culture.

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Back to the teachers now, when they saw this difference of 10 whole days per year, they were immediately reacting with phrases like, "Yes!  See?  Thai teachers work very hard!" and "So life in other countries is quite easy for teachers right?"

I was expecting this, and so I reached into my phone, and pulled out the following list :)  I kept quite close track of each day that I was 'at work,' this year, days where I was required to be at school but not actually doing anything at all.  Usually this meant that the students were off unexpectedly, but many other little reasons came up over the course of a year that caused this Thai school number of 69 days off to go up quite significantly...

*True, I am in the role of foreign teacher, not really subject to all the requirements (and therefore consequences) of a local teacher, but I still follow the same schedule as they, sign my name every day, and still have a responsibility to and for my students...  (I sign my name every day in a book that's all my own, it sits next to the book which the other 42 teachers at my school must sign daily, and I'm not sure that anyone has ever checked my book a single time :) )

Ok. the list :)

This is only for 2nd semester by the way, and 2nd semester is known to be a bit more relaxed than 1st... but not much!!  The same kind of things happen regularly in 1st term as well, I just didn't keep as close a record...

So, shool opened Nov 1, but I should mention that the end of 1st term date was actually moved up from Oct 12 to Oct 6 due to the yearly flooding in the region causing road closures around the school.  For teachers and students alike, woohoo! An entire extra week of vacation!!  But what if a student needed the extra time to turn in late work, or learn a few more hours of test-prep... exactly.

In an unbelievable, frustrating, and finally hilarious-because-I-couldn't-do-anything-but-laugh-situation, the Director ordered the teachers to test all 10 subjects in 1 day, as the fields behind the school (and the teacher housing (my house first :) ) were slowly filling with water from the river behind our school and our town.  The students are meant to have 3 days for these exams, with 1 additional day in case of a student being sick, needing to re-test, etc. and then a day for the teachers to inform the students of their final scores for the semester before closing the school for term break.  So imagine this week turned into a single 6-hour sprint!!  Teachers' tests were literally flying off the printers, on and off of the students desks, the secretaries and school staff literally sprinting from one building to another informing teachers of different and conflicting information... students failing left and right, failing not because they were performing poorly in school, not necessarily anyways, but because some students were given responses such as this...
Student - "Teacher, I have to go to the bathroom!"
Teacher - "Not yet, please finish Math first, then we have Science, then you can go to the bathroom."

Testing an entire semester in 10 minutes... oh man.  How would anyone think that these scores could be useful?  Just quite the memorable day at school...

Anyways, back to the schedule details.

We opened Nov.1 and finished Mar.22, but besides the 7 holidays that we, of course, still had off in light of all the other days off that came to be, can't touch those of course!, here is the full list of what happened day to day...

November (No Bank Holidays)
3) School cancelled for local director's meeting
10,11,12) All morning classes cancelled for all grades to practice sports
13,14) All classes cancelled all day to prepare for Sports Day
17) Sports Day
18,19,20,21) All afternoon classes cancelled because it appeared that many students would be good enough to go on and compete at the provincial level, and all the other students were somehow needed to cheer these students on while they practiced during school hours...
26,27) Whole day practice for athletes, so few students still wanting to study in class that teachers just didn't come, and instead found other ways to entertain themselves during the day...
28) Whole day off while our school grounds were used to host a track meet for another school.  Not related to our school, none of our students involved in the meet.

December (6 Bank Holidays)
4) Whole day off for students to listen to a monk come and bless the new statue that was donated to our school grounds by a local merchant.
5) Father's Day off
9) Whole Day off for students to enjoy a traveling Chinese Traditional Circus, visits each year
10) Constitution Day off
15) 6th Graders begin a new schedule that doesn't include the English portion of the subjects I teach (Math, Science, English), they are studying for their end-of-year placement exam, the single test that decides their high school options and therefore most likely their university options because of the various environments they will then move into...  And they of course know that once they finish this test then nothing they do at school really matters anymore, and therefore after the day that these sessions begin, usually in January but this year they started early, I no longer see any students in any class of Grade 6 except when I catch them skipping class (even on this super relaxed schedule) or on weekends.
26) All-Day Christmas Party
29,30,31) New Years Break *not actually a holiday for more than 2, sometimes 3 days, but the Director I guess just decided to give all his 'over-worked' staff (or himself) a nice long entire week break.  *I was so tired of sitting in school NOT teaching, that I actually went for 2 days of this break to another school even deeper into the countryside and volunteered for the day teaching English, oh yeah and hilariously enough I actually got in trouble for not asking for a leave of absence!  All govt. employees are required to inform their respective places of work in case of absence, whether or not its a work day, and additionally when they offer their services to another institution there has to be a filing of proper paperwork (I guess even for volunteering in one's free time!)...)

January (4 Bank Holidays)
1,2) New Years cont.
5) Thursday off to decorate the school auditorium for...
6) Children's Day, students came to school, but all left with their parents before 10AM
13) Half-Day preparing school for another sports day, the local high school used our facilities for their overflow, again none of our students were involved.
16) Teacher's Day
19) From here on, not only do 6th Graders not study with me, but they are given until the time of their exams special time to study whatever subjects they feel need work.  Independent Study time for 6th graders for 2 weeks...

February (No Bank Holidays)
3,4) Whole Day, English Camp
6) Half Day off, Field Trip
9) Whole Day off, Scout Camp
10) Whole Day off, Field Trip
13) Half-Day, all students meeting with Dentist

March (1 Bank Holiday)
4) Makha Bucha Day, Buddhist Holiday to commemorate The Buddha's most enlightening speech
11,12) Whole Days off for school to be checked 'thoroughly' by admin. from other schools
13) Whole Day off, Teacher fun trip to the beach as reward for passing inspection
22) School ends for students, teachers have 1 additional week to complete student's grades.

SO!

I did not take as much time to explain as the time it just took you to read all that, the Thai teachers would already know what all the additional holidays were for anyways... but they just don't consider them holidays.  In these teachers minds, any day they had to sign in and sign out was a work day, even if they did not a minute of work in between.  They are basically kept on a leash by the schools for which they work, and so they are therefore much more willing to keep things relaxed.  Their occupations really are a much bigger portion of their lives than jobs are in the West, the two are not kept in separate boxes...

Sports Day in Chumpuang!

Many Westerners of course, have the experience of fighting (or accepting) for a balance between work and personal lives, many different types of jobs can easily take up more and more of what might seem like one's "right" to personal freedoms, but in other countries such thoughts of personal freedom might not even occur to people, let alone be difficult things to achieve.  I very much appreciate the chances that I have to be able to step back as it were, even though I am right there involved in whats happening, and try to take some perspective when I have the opportunity.

As for my own life in Thailand, and probably many foreign teachers here, I am placed in a little pre-set niche.  I spent a long time in Chumpuang trying to break out of the things they had ready for me, things being both physical and non-physical.  Physical meaning things like the teachers meeting before I arrived and discussing/preparing where I would live, what I would eat, and what my daily hours would be spent doing, both in school and out!, and then non-physical being all the pre-conceived notions that the Thais have of foreigners - those were the things that I spent a huge deal of time trying to respectfully upset and gracefully break at every chance I got...

In the end of course, no one can be friends with everyone everywhere all the time, but I am sure that I could write a book, happily spend time doing so, about the huge joy I experienced in being able to live in their culture.  I am gone now, almost assuredly moved on from there for good, and so I can only hope that all the little seeds I planted in their minds (mostly kids, but really tons of townspeople as well!  One of my favorite things to do in free time was just stroll through the night market and chat with all the ladies selling vegetables and fruit.  It is all these little things that add together to be, in the end, not little at all, and actually form a huge portion of the memories that I will take away from my three and a half years living there.

To finish this off, I am not really trying to say that one school schedule is easier, one more challenging, one correct, one needing improvement, because there are necessary improvements in pretty much every system that a human could ever create.  I am really just wanting to record my memories of life here as they happen.  Obviously living alone here in the countryside I have quite a few more than the 11 memories that I have blogged about :)  But this was a cool one, I wanted to write about it.  Have a great day!  Take care!

ASEAN Day in Chumpuang, teachers choose a country out of the 10 member nations in the ASEAN Economic Community (All South East Asian countries), and (hopefully) study up and find ways to get students more interested in another culture/country... and then wear the traditional dress of that country one time per year and take twelve thousand photos, call it a day at 11AM, and go have a nice party with all the other teachers for the rest of the day!! :)

Ok, I definitely won't deny enjoying (immensely) all of the lunches these light-hearted teachers invited me for... :)
This was some Som Tam Laos that graced our table at the aforementioned 11AM ASEAN Day early lunch!