Did the Thai Ministry of Education order a delay to the start of the new academic year for public schools due to extreme heat? No, that's not true: schools started on May 16, 2024, without delay. The ministry only issued a guideline on how schools should navigate extreme heat, which included halting in-person instruction depending on each school's decision.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok posted on May 5, 2024 (archived here). It had the following caption (translated from Thai to English by Lead Stories staff):
Urgent! Thailand delayed the 2024 school year because of hot weather.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed May 22 11:40:45 2024 UTC)
The 15-second video features a woman lip-syncing to an unrelated song with the above caption. The claim was also circulated on Facebook such as here (archived here).
Lead Stories reached out to the Ministry of Education's Dissemination and Public Relations Division on May 15, 2024, to seek an official statement but did not receive a response.
Lead Stories then sent a message to the Ministry's public service hotline on Facebook on the same date, May 15, 2024, inquiring about the claim, and an official responded, as translated: "Basic education starts May 16." Asked whether there was a nationwide delay in the start of the school year due to heat, the official said, as translated: "No such mandate."
Additionally, the Office of the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education confirmed through the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society misinformation website (archived here) that the claim was misleading. It explained that the Office of the Basic Education Commission has issued a guideline on how schools should navigate the weather during the beginning of the semester as it was predicted that many areas in Thailand would still experience extreme weather in May.
The guidelines, widely shared on public schools' social media accounts such as here and here (archived here and here), included an item that states, as translated, "in case of hot weather that affects students' daily lives, (schools) shall consider halting in-person instruction and consider holding classes in other forms" such as remotely.
Officials also said some schools had announced they would delay the start of the academic year, but it depended on the administration of each school specifically to determine whether that had to be warranted, and there was no national mandate to do so.
