มูลนิธิลำปลายมาศพัฒนา

                ด้วยกรอบความคิดของการศึกษาที่เอาความรู้เป็นตัวตั้งและ เป็นระบบแพ้คัดออก  ทำให้มีเด็กเพียงจำนวนหนึ่งเท่านั้นที่จะสามารถเรียนต่อไปในระดับสูงขึ้นได้  โอกาสแคบลง ในบางกระบวนการยังเป็นการย่ำยีคุณค่าความเป็นมนุษย์ในตัวเด็กโดยการเปรียบเทียบหรือตีค่า การใช้ความกลัวกับความอยากเป็นเครื่องล่อคนไปสู่เป้าหมายยิ่งทำให้เด็ก อ่อนแอในกระแสบริโภคนิยม วัตถุนิยม หรือค่านิยมตามอย่าง เด็กอีกส่วนหนึ่งที่ไม่เก่งด้านวิชาการจึงถูกทิ้งระหว่างทางทั้งที่พวกเธอเหล่านั้นต่างก็มีศักยภาพด้านอื่นๆที่รอการงอกงาม      

                มูลนิธิลำปลายมาศพัฒนาซึ่งเป็นมูลนิธิเพื่อการกุศล จึงก่อตั้งโรงเรียนลำปลายมาศพัฒนา  ที่มีทั้งระดับอนุบาล  ประถมศึกษา และ มัธยมศึกษา เพื่อเป็นโรงเรียนตัวอย่างในการจัดการศึกษาที่เอาชีวิตเป็นตัวตั้ง อันจะเป็นที่ที่มนุษย์ได้สร้างการเรียนรู้สำหรับมนุษย์โดยไม่ละทิ้งใครแม้แต่คนเดียว ซึ่งจะมีครู พ่อแม่ และชุมชนร่วมมือกันในการเกื้อหนุนให้เด็กทุกๆคนได้มีโอกาสที่จะประสบความสำเร็จและงอกงามได้ตามศักยภาพตามความถนัดและตามความปรารถนาของตน 

                 เชิญร่วมบริจาคในการจัดการศึกษาเพื่อการกุศล  และ  เพื่อการขยายผลอันจะส่งผลต่อการพัฒนาการศึกษาของประเทศไทยผ่านมูลนิธิลำปลายมาศพัฒนา wichian@lpmp.org

 Lamplaimat Pattana School

Education for Complete Human Development

       Lamplaimat Pattana School was founded with the  objective of demonstrating the possibility of providing a high-quality education to children in rural areas.  It is a private school, but is owned by a non-profit organization, the Lamplaimat Pattana Foundation, and does notcharge tuition fees; financial support comes mainly from charitable donations. It opened in 2002 and has approximately 240 children enrolledat the kindergarten and primary levels. It does not select children based on ability; instead, a lottery is used when necessary. It is located in a rural part of Buriram province in the North-East of Thailand; Buriram is one of the  poorest provinces in Thailand, with educational scores in the bottom 10% of provinces.

       There is a real need for such a school. Thailand has made good progress towards achieving the goal of universal primary and secondary education,with 95% of children attending school.  However, quality remains a major problem, particularly in rural areas. The Ministry of Education has recently introduced a new national curriculum, which is aligned withmodern educational thinking. However, most schools have found it difficult to change their traditional teaching methods to meet the needsof the new curriculum.

Goals

       Traditionally, Thai schools have focused on accumulation of facts through rote learning. But in today’s world, the problem is not one of too little information but one of too much information. The key skills that are needed are critical thinking skills that allow finding and separating out the relatively small amount of relevant, valid, importantinformation from the huge mass of mostly useless information with whichwe are continually bombarded. Beyond that, it is important to build skills for imaginative and creative thinking, together with the self-confidence to express that thinking. It is also important to develop positive attitudes and feelings towards learning: it is much more important that children acquire a habit for and love of learning than that they master any particular body of knowledge. Of course, all these higher level skills do depend on a mastery of  basic foundational skills, such as reading, writing and arithmetic.

In addition to intellectual skills, the school places great emphasis on developing a range of emotional, social and spiritual qualities that help children to lead happy, fulfilling lives and contribute positively to society. It also tries to ensure that children feel connected to and are proud of their local community and its traditions, so as to encourage them to spend their adult lives in the local community, ratherthan to migrate to Bangkok.

Another key goal of the school is to ensure that all students, without exception, achieve their full potential. Since the school does not practice selective entry, this requires the school to deal with a broad range of physical, intellectual and behavioral problems.

The school aims not just to provide a quality education to its students,but also to serve as an example that can help other schools improve their quality.  It tries therefore to avoid use of resources beyond whatcould be expected from a government school. It also aims to be consistent with Thailand’s national curriculum.

Achievements

       Lamplaimat Pattana School has become well-known in Thailand as one of the country’s leading progressive schools, and has been featured in numerous TV programmes and newspaper articles.Despite its policy of not selecting children based on ability, it achieved the best results of allof Buriram’s 860 schools in the primary-level nationwide standardized tests in 2010, and was in the top 15% of schools nationwide. In an external quality assessment for 2005-2010 by the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment, the school was assessed to be at in the highest level for 13 out of 14 criteria, and at the second highest level for the one other criteria. All children that have graduated from the school, including those with significant learning difficulties, have achieved a satisfactory level of competence in reading, writing and arithmetic.

       The school was reviewed by an independent team of educational experts from the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania in 2006. Thereview concluded that Lamplaimat Pattana “is an excellent school, whichis achieving and exceeding its stated objectives. It compares favourably with international schools and benchmarks of international best practice drawn from the effective schools literature.”

       Non-academic achievements are harder to quantify objectively, but the happy and joyful atmosphere is immediately apparent to any visitor. The school has no problems with bullying, truancy or vandalism, although these are major problems for schools with a similar intake.

       During 2009 the school was visited by 400 groups with a total of more 12,000 people, the vast majority being teachers from government schools.Of these, about half participated in multi-day training courses. The school has had visitors from every region, with some visitors travellingmore than 20 hours by bus for a half-day visit. In all, about 200 schools have adopted at least some of the ideas that they learned  during training courses. A book about the school, written by the headmaster, is in its 8th printing and has sold more than 80,000 copies.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

      The school’s average total annual expenditure per child inacademic year 2009/2010 was 42,000 baht (about US$1177).  Remarkably, this is lower than the comparable figure for government schools in Buriram, which is about 50,000 baht. 

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