Community-Based Vocational Development and Educational Inequality Reduction: Evidence from the Equitable Education Fund in Urban Thailand

Abstract

Educational inequality among Thailand’s working-age urban population constitutes a persistent structural impediment to equitable human capital development. This study investigates the community-based development processes and facilitative roles of Occupational Development Units (ODUs) established under the Equitable Education Fund (EEF) and their contribution to reducing educational inequality in urban communities. Employing a qualitative research design, data were collected through participant observation, field-based data analysis, systematic documentary analysis, and purposive in-depth interviews. Two ODUs served as case studies: one in Ban Klang Subdistrict, Pathum Thani Province, grounded in Mon cultural heritage, and one in the Min Buri and Nong Chok districts of Bangkok, utilising Islamic Halal principles as a religion-based learning framework.Findings indicate that both ODUs functioned as community facilitators, delivering skill development across four domains — cultural and religious, marketing, creative, and production skills — resulting in measurable monthly income increases and enabling participants to establish and sustain viable livelihoods. The study concludes that context-specific social capital constitutes an essential foundation for sustainable vocational development. Policy implications include the need to recognise community-based vocational programmes as a legitimate instrument of urban human capital policy, to design development initiatives that are contextualised to local knowledge systems and cultural resources, to invest in community religious and cultural spaces as educational infrastructure, and to align the ODU model explicitly with SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) as a framework for scaling equitable vocational development across diverse urban communities in Thailand and comparable national contexts.