After grade 9 (Matthayom 3), pupils can pursue upper-secondary education in a university-preparatory track, or continue their studies in vocational school programs.

Unlike other parts of South and Southeast Asia, particularly the Indian subcontinent, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia and the Philippines, Thailand has never been colonised by a Western power.

As a result, structured education on the lines of that in developed countries gained new impetus with the reemergence of diplomacy in the late nineteenth century.

It is possible that one of the earliest forms of education began when King Ram Khamhaeng the Great invented the Thai alphabet in 1283 basing it on Mon, Khmer, and southern Indian scripts.

In the period of the Ayutthaya kingdom from 1350 to 1767 during the reign of King Narai the Great (1656–1688), the Chindamani, generally accepted as the first textbook of the Thai language, collating the grammar.

The prosody of Thai language and official forms of correspondence was written by a monk, Pra Horatibodi, in order to stem the foreign educational influence of the French Jesuit schools It remained in use up to King Chulalongkorn's reign (1868–1910).

Through his reforms of the Buddhist Sangha, King Rama I (1782–1809), accelerated the development of public education and during the reign of King Rama IV (1851–1865) the printing press arrived in Thailand making books available in the Thai language for the first time; English had become the lingua franca of the Far East, and the education provided by the monks was proving inadequate for government officials.

King Rama V (1868–1910) continued to influence the development of education and in 1871 the first relatively modern concept of a school with purpose constructed building, lay teachers and a time-table was opened in the palace to teach male members of the royal family and the sons of the nobility.

It was established by his son and successor King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) in 1917 by combining the Royal Pages School and the College of Medicine.

Fifth, following structural reforms in 2008, Thailand now has a 30 per cent inclusion rate across the entire curriculum for decentralized, locally based subjects and teaching.

[16] Following the military takeover of May 2014, Prayut, in a televised broadcast in July, ordered schools to display a list of 12 "Thai" values he composed.

[17] They are: Authorities instructed public schools and state agencies to hang a banner listing Gen Prayut's teachings on their premises.

In late-December 2014, the Ministry of Information, Communication, and Telecommunications (MICT) released a set of "stickers" depicting each of the Twelve Values for users of the chat application LINE.

The military government under Prayut Chan-o-cha instituted a "land defender battalion" program to teach uniformed children aged four and five to do push-ups, crawl under netting, salute, and eat from metal trays on the floor.

"[16] In May 2012, parents and students at the prestigious Bodindecha (Sing Singhaseni) School, commonly referred to as "Bodin", in Bangkok staged a hunger strike to protest what they viewed as admissions irregularities.

The students suspected that school executives had taken away their seats to give to children of parents willing to pay huge sums of "tea money" or bribes.

The greater the competition, the higher the amount of donations the parents believe they have to offer in exchange for their children's chances to get a good education at a quality school.

"[24] "Thai teachers, as well as university lecturers, are not as well paid as their colleagues in Malaysia or Singapore, not to mention those in the United States or Europe," according to the Bangkok Post.

In the scheme, vocational, unlike regular internships, where students may be assigned to work on unpaid irrelevant jobs, the cooperative education programme enables students of the vocational schools to do field work while benefiting from an allowance to cover living expenses or free accommodation, and compensation for their contributions made to the company's income and profits as temporary employees.

[44] Source:[46] The standardised exams universities generally accepted are as follows: The TGAT is divided into three sections: Presently, there are TPATs for five fields: medicine; liberal arts; science, technology, and engineering; architecture; and education.

A foreign language is used as the medium of teaching and learning and students are enrolled without restriction or limitation on nationality or religion or government regime, and are not against the morality or stability of Thailand.

[48] Established in 1996, DLTV (Distance Learning via TV)[49] broadcasts 15 educational channels[50] from Klai Kangwon Palace School, Hua Hin.

[51] In recent years, the number of fresh graduates from teacher-training schools has ranged from 50,000 to 60,000 annually, raising concerns about quality and oversupply.

In September 2015, the Office of the Higher Education Commission (OHEC) put forward an initiative to provide 58,000 grants to student-teachers over a 15-year period.

[53] Elementary and secondary school teachers do not enjoy the same long breaks as the students and are required to work through the vacations on administrative duties.

Students in ethnic minority areas, predominantly rural, score consistently lower in standardized national and international tests.

[59][60][61] Students from poor families living in remote areas face limited access to quality education compared to their urban counterparts.

Jiraphon Arunakon, Director of the Gender Variation Clinic, says that sex education as taught in Thailand lags behind or ignores scientific research.

"Women are told to protect their virginity but Thai men who have multiple sexual encounters are seen as cool," said Visa Benjamano, a commissioner at the National Human Rights Council (NHRC).

[68] Uniforms are compulsory for all students with very few variations from the standard model throughout the public and private school systems, including colleges and universities.