Lamplaimat Pattana School

Lamplaimat Pattana School (LPMP, Thai: โรงเรียนลำปลายมาศพัฒนา) is in Buriram, Thailand. The 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 School Foundation which has Mr.James Clark as President, does not charge tuition fees; financial support comes mainly from charitable donations. It opened in 2002 and has approximately 240 children enrolled at 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 with modern educational thinking. However, most schools have found it difficult to change their traditional teaching methods to meet the needs of the new curriculum.

Goal

The key skills that are needed are critical thinking skills that allow finding and separating out the relatively small amount of relevant, valid, important information from the huge mass of mostly useless information with which they 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. The school also places great emphasis on developing a range of emotional, social and spiritual qualities that help children to lead happy. Another key goal of the school is to ensure that all students, 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.

Achievements

Lamplaimat Pattana School has become well known as one of the leading progressive schools in Thailand, 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 all of 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. The school was evaluated by an independent team of educational experts from the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania in 2006. The review concluded that Lamplaimat Pattana "is an excellent school, which is achieving and exceeding its stated objectives. It compares favourably with international schools and benchmarks of international best practice drawn from the effective schools literature."

Teaching methods

The school's approach to teaching uses many ideas from the Teaching for Understanding framework developed by Project Zero at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. However, it also integrates ideas from other methodologies and includes innovations that were developed at the school. The school continually evolves its teaching methods based on its practical experience. Subjects are divided into two main categories. Thai, Mathematics and English are taught separately, because these involve foundational skills, which must be developed with practice. Other subjects are taught using an integrated project-based approach; each class does one project for an entire quarter. The school avoids the use of standard textbooks; instead teachers prepare learning materials precisely tailored to students' needs. In all subjects, a large proportion of classroom time is spent in collaborative, group activities. The school has an intricate planning process that ensures coverage of the subject matter specified in the national curriculum. Every day starts with a twenty minute session that is designed to put students in a peaceful, calm, relaxed, contented, positive state of mind, which will maximize their capacity for learning. This session uses a wide range of activities, which are varied during the week, including yoga, meditation, music and story-telling. These activities are also designed to develop the children's emotional and spiritual side.

Mission

A school where the pupils are happy and fulfil their potential, which is adapted to its local environment and current technology, and which develops the complete individual, instilling individual morality, preserving community traditions and promoting good citizenship

External links

• Official website
• nation multimedia
• Mr.James Clark