Decentralization of education in Thailand: How were power, information, knowledge, and rewards devolved to the OESAs? And how did the OESAs respond to the change

Decentralization of education has been used as a way to improve the quality of education in several settings. In Thailand, as part of a large-scale reform, the educational administrative system has been changed from a centralized system, which the departments at the central level made important decisions in the areas of budget, personnel, and curriculum management to a decentralized system, which the central government gives power to the lower level organization to make decisions in these issues. The lower level organization to which the management power is decentralized is a new organization called the Offices of Educational Service Areas (OESAs). Under the decentralization policy, the central government would provide broad educational policies, and guided by those broad policies, OESAs are expected to use increasing power to manage resources and manpower in ways that improve education in their areas.; Guided by the high-involvement management model and sense-making theory, the study attempts to answer two research questions: (1) In what way and to what extent did the central government devolved power, knowledge, information and rewards to OESAs? (2) How did people in the OESAs respond to the policy and what influenced such responses?; Selecting three OESAs as sample sites, the researcher conducted qualitative research using methods such as interviews, observations, and examination of written materials. Data from the three OESAs showed that the central government devolved to the OESAs power to reconfigure personnel, power to approve matters concerning personnel, power to provide academic support to schools, power to allocate budget in the capital expense category and power to use the OESAs' own budget. The central government devolved to the OESAs several types of information. The central government provided training in technical skills but not much training in management skills and strategic planning skills. The central government also did not devolve rewards to the OESAs. People in the three OESAs responded to the policy differently due to each person's prior knowledge and experience, and the social contexts of the OESAs such as the organizational cultures and leadership.