Thailand's minister of education associate " the panel of high-level policy makers or Ministers: 2-3 15’ presentations of country and international examples. "

It was a meeting related to the situation of children who missed the education system in ASEAN.
The results of the conference would be presented at the 35th ASEAN Summit in November 2019.
The Minister of Ministry of Education reiterated that if the number of children dropped, they would be a burden for society.
Setting a goal to reduce the number of children falling from tens of thousands to tens of thousands within 2 years

(16 September 2019) Mr. Natthaphon Thepsuwan, Minister of Education chaired the ASEAN Conference on Out-of-School Children and Youth (OOSCY Conference) at Ballroom, Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel, Bangkok.

Minister of Education said at the conference by emphasizing the importance of enhancing cooperation with partners to drive educational activities, create development opportunities that covered all target groups, leaving no one behind and called on ASEAN member to take advantage of the opportunity that Thailand was ASEAN president to announce the leaders’ intention to strengthen education for children and youth in the region.

This opportunity, Minister of Education gave a keynote speech on “Leaving no one behind: Through Advancing Partnership”, which demonstrated the importance of all sectors in collaborating to create quality learning opportunities to ensure that ASEAN Member could develop quality people thoroughly and were able to lead the country through social inequality (Socioeconomic) and bring equal opportunities for development, which was the goal of the ASEAN vision of not leaving anyone behind.

If the number of children and youths that were dropping steadily increased in the future, there would be problems because the last uneducated children would become a burden for society and government. Especially children with disabilities and children who lacked access to education must find this group of children and tried to solve this problem to the best so that all children received equal basic education according to government policies. The work would be distributed according to the responsibility of each department, as well as pushing for concrete results with the goal of reducing the number of children and youth who fell from the hundred thousand to remain tens of thousands in 2 years, “said the Minister of Education.

Ms. Duriya Amataviwat, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, said about this conference held for 2 days between 16-17 September 2019, with executives, senior education officials in ASEAN, experts in out-of-school children and youth as well as academics, practitioners attending the conference to receive information relating to the situation of out-of-school children and young people in the ASEAN Member.

And the impact on the growth and development of member countries and exchange of knowledge on policy innovations were good practices to reduce the number of out-of-school children and youth. There was a network of cooperation between ASEAN and the dialogue partners to create opportunities to access education and suggest important issues that should be accelerated to reduce the number of children and youth who were out-of-school in ASEAN. There would be a discussion together to develop guidelines for raising awareness of the importance of education and creating opportunities for ASEAN children and youth to access quality education according to the readiness of each individual.

At this conference Thailand was honored by the ambassador, permanent representative of the Kingdom of Norway in ASEAN in Jakarta, the director of the UNESCO Bangkok office, and the representative of UNICEF in Thailand, the director of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization, the Director of the Office of Human Resources Development, the ASEAN Secretariat who thanked Thailand for giving equal opportunities to all people especially development and learning opportunities for sustainable development.

The outcome of the conference would be presented at the meeting of the ASEAN Senior Education Officials and ASEAN Education Ministers including in the ASEAN Regional Action Plan to implement the ASEAN Declaration to Strengthening Education for the Out-of-School Children and Youth to present at the ASEAN Summit in the 35th ASEAN Summit in November 2019.