Roles of educational resources in Thai public schools: quantile regression

Resource-based education policies are common worldwide to improve student achievement. This study employs panel data with the first differences estimation to examine the relationships between educational resources and student achievement. This first differences estimation minimises endogeneity problems. Besides, quantile concept helps to explore the relationship along the score distributions. This research uses data of public primary schools and public secondary schools in 2014 and 2017. The results show that school subsidies from the Free Education Programme could promote student achievement in public schools when schools are adequately funded. However, low student achievement public schools have inadequate resources. When public schools have insufficient resources, these schools prioritise spending on utility bill and school administration and spend less on students. Second, subsidies for small schools cannot compensate for disadvantages of small public schools. Small public schools face many disadvantages such as high percentage of poor students and low school budget. Lastly, teacher expense per student does not reflect student achievement due to weak links between teacher compensate and student achievement.To improve student achievement, the government should provide higher subsidies for small public schools to ensure minimum required resources. Creating teacher incentives is essential to improve student achievement and attract quality teachers to protected and small schools. Finally, supporting staff recruitment will reduce teachers' workload outside the classroom. Therefore, teachers can focus on student learning.