Thailand's youth literacy rate was 98.1% in 2015.[199] Education is provided by a well-organised school system of kindergartens, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools, numerous vocational colleges, and universities. Education is compulsory up to and including age 14, with the government is mandated to provide free education through to age 17. The establishment of reliable and coherent curricula for its primary and secondary schools is subject to rapid changes. Issues concerning university entrance has been in constant upheaval for a number of years. The country is also one of the few that still mandates uniform up to the university years, which is still a subject of ongoing debate. The quality of providing education in the country is often questioned.
In 2013, the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology announced that 27,231 schools would receive classroom-level access to high-speed internet.[200] However, the country's educational infrastructure was still underprepared for online teaching, as smaller and more remote schools were particularly hindered by COVID-19 restrictions.[201]
The number of higher education institutions in Thailand has grown strongly over the past decades to 156 officially. The two top-ranking universities in Thailand are Chulalongkorn University and Mahidol University.[202] Thai universities research output still relatively low, even though the country's journal publications increased by 20% between 2011 and 2016.[203] Recent initiatives, such as the National Research University[204] and Graduate research intensive university: VISTEC, are designed to strengthen Thailand's national research universities.