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Walailak University is making headway in faculty reform under the UKPSF standard of the United Kingdom. The goal is to build up a faculty system with 100% professional teachers. 303 more teachers were certified by UKPSF (The United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework), and 50 of them were approved as senior fellows, the highest number in Thailand.

20 April 2021, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Surin Maisrikrod, Vice President for Global Engagement and Faculty Development of Walailak University, explained that Walailak University, under the lead of Prof. Dr. Sombat Thamrongthanyawong, the current WU president, gives priority to learning and teaching reform as a way to step forward to status as a high-quality university. UKPSF, the national teaching standard from Advance HE of the UK has been implemented in all classrooms. To date, 50 WU teachers have been certified with a Fellowship, and 252 were certificated as Fellows. This is not only the highest number in Thailand but also makes Thailand No. 3 in the world, excluding the UK.

Dr. Surin said that the objective of using the learning and teaching system of the UKPSF standard is to equip teachers with capability and professionality; all teachers have to be trained and to pass the UKPSF process. Also, there is a benefit to students when they gain abilities in thinking, analyzing, and synthesizing, and avoid reliance exclusively on memorizing. Recently, WU has completed its fourth UKPSF training, each of the four including approximately 60 teachers and for a total of 241. This is in addition to eight pre-UKPSF training sessions that have included 500 university teachers.

“The faculty reform policy under the framework of UKPSF should be seen as an impressive result because after using the UKPSF system, WU teachers’ average assessment score from students reaches 4.46 out of 5, students have better grades, and the student dropout rate is down to just 0.05%. We want students and parents to have confidence in the teaching quality of Walailak University,” said Dr. Surin.

By Phubes Thraisuwan, Division of Corporate Communication's trainee