The views expressed in this presentation are the views of the author and do not

necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Asian Development Bank Institute
(ADBI), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), its Board of Directors, or the
governments they represent. ADBI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data
Session V
included in this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequences of their use.
Terminology used may not necessarily be consistent with ADB official terms. Effectiveness of Financial
Education:
Thailand’s Case Study
on CCT for extremely
poor students

Kraiyos Patrawart, PhD

Deputy Managing Director
Equitable Education Fund (EEF)
kraiyos@eef.or.th
 Agenda
1. Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program in Thailand
 Targeting the extremely poor students
 Proxy Mean Test (PMT)
 Conditionalities
2. Objectives of Financial Education in EEF’s program
3. Experiential-based Financial Education Programs in Thailand
 CCT Investment Program
 Equity Partnership Program
4. Summary
5. Way Forward – Future Research Opportunity
2
 Article 54 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of
Thailand BE 2560 requires Thai Government to establish
an Education Fund with 3 specific objectives:
Thailand’s
To Support Poor and Disadvantaged Populations
New
2017 Constitution To Improve Equity in Education

Require Thai government to To Promote Teacher Quality and Efficiency

set up an independent
education fund with specific
mandates to improve
education equity in Thailand
Article 54 also requires the Fund to be independently
managed and financed by the government funding and
donations with special tax incentive.

“Equitable Education Fund (EEF)”

Equitable Education Fund Target Groups (4m+ people)
5
Teachers who teach children and adolescents in Group 2 – 4
6
Poor Late Adolescents (Age 18-25) who need work-based skill training 0.15 million
2 million 2.3 million 7.1 million 2.4 million

3.1 Poor Students in Students in Compulsory School

kindergarten 3.3 Poor Students in
0.61 million
6.9 million (97%) High School (Gen/Vac)
1 (26%) 0.36 mil (15%)

3.2 Poor Students Disable Students

Infant 2.1 1.8 million (25%) 0.34 mil (5%)
0.77 million 4
(40%) Pre-school OOSC
2.2 0.2 million
0.23 million (3%) Dropouts (After Grade 9)
(10%) Comp. School OOSC 0.24 million (10%)
Infant 0-2 Pre-school 3-5 Compulsory School Age 6 – 14 Adolescents 15 - 17
Source: Calculate from Civil Registry Data from Ministry of Interior and Student Registration from Ministry of Education
1. Thailand 1st Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT)
Using EdTech and FinTech to help teachers collect data for PMT

1. Teacher visit student’s home with Smartphone

2. Use CCT’s Mobile application to collect:
- Household data on income and asset ownership
- Geographical location and photos of the household
3. Local administrators certify the accuracy of data by e-signing on CCT’s App
Proxy Means Test – Evidence-based Poverty Screening

Income below 3,000 Baht (100 US$) Poverty scores are calculated with
average per person/per month provincial-based parameters

Unemployed/ Disable Parents

Extremely poor housing conditions

Car ownership

Land ownership

Home ownership Electricity access Extreme poor

students
Water access Home appliances = PMT 0.9-1.0
77
 Two Targeting Criteria
Severity of poverty

I
> 3,000
Non-poor
Average bath/month/person
monthly
household
income per II Slightly Poor
capita ≤ 3,000 Proxy Means Test
Poor
bath/month/person (PMT)
Extremely Poor

8
Teacher capture
photos on their
smartphone
Example of Poor Students’ home conditions
 Average inc
Number of students per person
Extremely Poor Students
who receive CCT

Poverty Score
 CCT - Payment
Receipt (cash payment)

Face Recognition
• Parent (ID card vs Group)
• Student (Profile vs Group)
• Director (Profile vs Group)
OR

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

• Parent Citizen ID / Name

12
 2 Conditionalities
(1) School Attendance > 80% & (2) Normal BMI
2. Objectives of Financial Education in EEF’s program

14
Objectives of Financial Education in EEF’s program
1. Low income and lowly educated households are likely to have
low financial literacy and financial behavior that are
unconducive to getting out of poverty.
2. Providing CCT to students from these low income households
alone will not always lead them out of poverty if their financial
literacy are no better than of their family.
3. EEF is currently piloting two experiential-based financial
education programs for schools with high number of extremely
poor students.
 CCT Investment Program
 Equity Partnership Program
15
3. Experiential-based Financial Education Programs in Thailand

16
 1) CCT Investment Program
1. In a typical CCT program, 100% of the cash is directly transferred to the
family, mostly mums or students. The program only monitors the
achievement of agreed conditionality and related outcomes.
2. In the pilot schools, EEF encourage schools and low-income household to
invest 50% of CCT (US$50/pupil) on developing agricultural or handicraft
products which could be sold for profit at the end of the semester. The
investment and profit are then shared among students.
3. There are 4 key objectives from this pilot program
 Learning the value of delayed gratification
 Financial literacy (Basic accounting and Financial planning)
 Entrepreneurship & other productive skills for future careers
 If successful, students could earn more than US$50 in the end
17
 CCT Investment Program Summary
1 2

Products are sold at schools, top 20

Schools use 50% of CCT to
products across the countries are
invest in student-led selected for EEF’s Dreamer’s market in
product development Bangkok

3 Expected Outcome
 Students gain 50% CCT back with
Profit is shared among poor additional dividend/profit
students and partly reinvested to  Students develop necessary
improve product development in entrepreneurial
OUTCOME and financial skills
the next semester which could be useful for future
career
EEF Dreamer’s
Market
 2) Equity Partnership
1. On one hand, most schools with 75-100% students from low-income
family are heavily under-resourced and understaffed, quantitatively
and qualitatively.
2. These schools not only lack any teacher who could provide financial
education to their students, most of these schools do not even have
basic math or science teachers.
3. On the other hand, students from most urban schools are well
resourced with dedicated economics/finance teachers. However,
students from these school have rarely face any difficult financial
challenges to utilize their financial literacy.
4. There are great opportunities for these two different kind of schools
to work together to improve effectiveness of their financial education
 2) Equity Partnership (cont.)
1. EEF invite 5 private schools in Bangkok along with 10 rural schools
across all five regions of Thailand to work together on the case
competition program
2. Students (Grade 8-10) from Bangkok schools and rural schools are
paired together to form a team of 6 students (3:3).
3. All teams are mentored by a team of experts on e-commerce,
entrepreneurship, finance and branding to develop their product
which use the local ingredients/inputs from the rural schools across
the countries.
4. Each team receive an endowment of US$650 to design, develop
and produce 100 pieces of the newly developed local product to
be sold online within 6 months. 21
 Equity Partnership Program Summary
Stage 1: Training workshop
 Urban-Rural School Workshop &
Case Competition
 Every team gets 20,000 Baht
endowment
 Mentored by E-commerce experts
(JD-Central Group)
Stage 3: Product Sale
 Experts continue to mentor
students, advising on logistics,
marketing and pricing
 Products launch and on sale on JD
Central website (100 pc. limited
edition)
 The highest earning teams win
the case competition
Stage 2: Field Trip + Product Development
 Private Schools + Rural students
explore local resources and
potential sellable products
 They co-develop a new product,
packaging, online marketing strategy
Expected Outcome
 Revenue given back to schools to
further develop their local products
 Students develop entrepreneurial
and financial skills
OUTCOME
 Students widen their perspective on
social inequity issues
 Schools from distinct environments
learn from each other and start a
long-term network
24
 Experiential/Experimental-based Financial Education
1. Sustainable change on students’ financial behavior
 Practicing actual financial decision making on a controlled environment may
induce positive changes on financial behavioral
 Most poor students could have been practicing this exercise for over 9 years
2. New experience on market-based financial activities
 Saving used to be the only investment option known by students
 A chance to become aware of their own risk appetite and learn from
outcome of their decision-making
3. Combining Financial and Digital Literacy together
 E-commerce, online business and entrepreneurship are the future of jobs
 Students could learn how to earn money for their family while studying
25
Summary and Way Forward

18

26
 Summary
1. Financial education and equitable education
 Financial education can improve the long-term effectiveness of
equitable education program for students from low-income
families
 Financial education can also help students raise money they
need to support their future education
2. Schools from two distinct backgrounds can join forces to
improve the effectiveness of financial education for
their students
Teacher networks from different schools can be an efficient way to
continuously improve financial education programs in each school 27
 Summary (cont.)
3. Financial Education and Intergenerational Poverty
 Educated and financially literate youth could reduce the
likelihood of intergenerational poverty in their family
 Repeated intervention through 9 years of CCT may sustain
positive financial behavior of children from low-income family
4. Financial Education of children and family is inseparable
 CCT offers a unique opportunity to allow “Co-learning”
experience on financial education between children and parents
in schools
 Exposing students to new environment and new peers could
promote new financial behavioral which is different from their
household and local communities 28
 Way Forward – Future Research Opportunities
1. Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
 A number of tests on financial behaviors and improvements can be done with
participated students through 9 years of CCT program
EEF can track these 800,000 poor students throughout compulsory schooling and
beyond – college attendance, future earning, tax, financial behaviors
 The positive spillover effects of financial education from students to family
members can also be examined through tests and follow-up programs
2. Policy Implication and Scale-up
 We hope that these students from low-income family will improve their financial
behavior and decision-making with higher chance of leaving the poverty trap
EEF is currently exploring the possibility of conducting a Randomized Control Trial
(RCT) to identify the long-term behavioral changes from these interventions before
recommending a scale-up to the government
 We welcome any other ideas or models for financial education program, targeting
students from low-income families, from the international experience 29
Thank you very much

www.EEF.or.th
EEFthailand