Updates

Thailand’s English proficiency ranking amongst non English speakers has fallen for the fourth consecutive year.

According to this year’s English Proficiency Index, which was released last week by Swiss based international education company Education First, Thailand ranked in just 89th place, out of 100 hundred countries surveyed.

With an overall score of just 419, Thailand is regarded as having “very low proficiency”.

This year’s ranking is Thailand’s lowest and represents the fourth consecutive year that Thailand’s ranking has dropped.

In 2019, Thailand ranked 74th out of 100, while in 2018 it ranked 64th out of 88 countries included in the index with a score of 48.54.

Education First described the “very low proficiency” ranking as those countries which can introduce oneself simply (name, age, country /regions of origin), understand simple signs and give basic directions to a foreign visitor.

By comparison, a “high proficiency” are those countries which can make a presentation at work, understand TV shows and read a newspaper, where as “very high proficiency” are countries where someone can use nuanced and appropriate language in social situations, read advanced texts with ease and negotiate a contract with a native English speaker

The index found that Thai men scored slightly higher than women, with scores of 48.68 and 47.59, respectively, both still some way short of the global averages of 53.03 for men and 53.23 for women.

Thailand’s lowely score means that with the exception of Myanmar (93rd), it is outperformed by all of its ASEAN neighbours when it comes to English speaking ability. 

Singapore (10th, vey high proficiency), the Philippines (27th, high proficiency) and Malaysia (30th Moderate proficiency) were the three best performing countries in ASEAN.

Both Vietnam (65th, low proficiency) and Cambodia (84th, very high proficiency) outperformed Thailand.

Globally, the Netherlands ranked in 1st place, while Denmark (2nd), Finland (3rd), Sweden (4th) and Norway (5th) were all found to have “very high proficiency”.

According to its website the Education First English Proficiency Index calculates a country’s average adult English skill level using data from two different English tests completed by hundreds of thousands of adults every year. 

One test is open to any Internet user for free. The second is an online placement test used by Education First during the enrollment process for English courses. Both include grammar, vocabulary, reading, and listening sections.

— © Copyright Thai Visa News 2020-11-25

f all else fails, democracy takes to the street. The street is its last resort. At present, each weekend we see the people of Belarus marching to demand the resignation of their president, Alexander Lukashenko. We see protesters in Thailand are jamming Bangkok to reform their monarchy. Nigerians are rioting in Lagos, Brazilians in São Paulo.

Something about street protest is catching. The past year has seen public violence in Hong Kong, Venezuela, France and Turkey. In the US we are told to expect riots if Trump loses next week’s election. Coronavirus disturbances have begun this week in Italy and are expected elsewhere. Governments are losing their grip. Crowds gather, banners unfurl, defiance is chanted. We have seen nothing like it since the Arab spring, now approaching its 10th anniversary.

Nothing in these demonstrations is remotely effective. At the time of the Arab spring’s “social media revolution” it was trumpeted that numbers amassed through social media and promoted by real-time publicity would make such protests devastating. Observers turned to the pundits, to Elias Canetti on the politics of crowds and Barbara Ehrenreich on the exhilaration of dancing in the streets. This was the new politics of collective action, a cathartic uplift of sympathy and public righteousness. London’s ban-the-bomb and anti-war rallies were recalled. No one registered that these were little more than festivals of protest rather than serious political campaigns. All failed.

We admired the solitary protesters of China’s Tiananmen and Turkey’s Taksim squares, largely because they were photogenic. Likewise, we were persuaded that virtue would triumph in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, in Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela and now in Lukashenko’s Belarus. We did not stop to ask whether our distant encouragement helped or hindered their cause. In Hong Kong, Britain allowed demonstrators to think it had some leverage on Beijing that might enable them to win. It did not. They are now facing prison. In Syria, we encouraged the rebels to think we might come to their aid. We did not and they suffered appallingly. We might now ask who gains from the current demonstrations in Philadelphia, which are being seized on as manna from heaven by Donald Trump.

One thing matters in political protest: how will the powerful respond? There is no value in mere numbers, in “raising awareness”, in column inches or high-profile heroes. In this respect an opinion poll is more potent over the powers that be than street protest. If government refuses to give way and can deploy ever more effective policing to sustain itself, demonstrations are just street parties.

The apparent success of uprisings across eastern Europe in 1989 is often cited as street politics in action. The Soviet collapse was nothing to do with the streets but with the collapse of a will to govern by local regimes following decisions taken by Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. Power evaporated overnight. Equally, Lukashenko can bash heads in Minsk streets as long as Vladimir Putin is behind him. If there is one thing that will keep Putin supporting Lukashenko it is fear of him capitulating to protest.

I remember attending an anti-Milosevic rally in Belgrade during the Kosovo war. It was unimpressive since Slobodan Milosevic was still popular, but a Serbian observer remarked that the rally was pointless. All that mattered was Moscow. When it suited Moscow for Milosevic to get out of Kosovo he would do so – everything else was country dancing. So indeed it turned out.

Defaulting to mass protest has always seemed the safety valve of democracy and no one likes to call its bluff. The urban mob has certainly played its role in history, in my view much underrated by historians. In London, it was crucial in the English civil war and in the reform crises of 1832 and 1867. Before the advent of democracy – and tear gas and water cannon – it undoubtedly frightened politicians. During the poll tax protests, demonstrators undoubtedly played a part in Margaret Thatcher’s downfall.

The reality is that political reform under any regime comes from within a particular power structure, not from outside, except when faced with naked military aggression. This applied to all the profound transformations of modern times, in Russia, China and South Africa. That is why those now concerned with the shaky condition of democracy should reform its rotten institutions, its parliaments, courts and councils, join political parties and stand for elections – however boring it might seem.

I may regard street protest as often ineffective, but that is not to deny its liberty. It remains democracy’s ultimate freedom. The pandemic has been seized upon by governments round the world as an excuse to curb the freedom to associate and amass an armoury of surveillance, intrusion and citizen control. We are told this is for our own good. Autocrats alway

Article by Simon Jenkins, a Guardian columnist

Good Friday, North Inner City, Dublin 1984

The majority of the photographs were taken in Dublin and County Kerry and, in spectacles of religious processions and marches, marking significant events of the recent past, convey a sense of community.

Divorce referendum protest at the GPO, Dublin, 1986

This is the first retrospective book of work by O’Shea. A large number of the images are previously unpublished.

Delivering fuel, North Inner City, Dublin, 1987

From city streets to the remote countryside, O’Shea’s photographs document the spectrum of public life across Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Painted pony, Smithfield, Dublin 1989

Often warmly humorous, the images are unified by his subjects’ dignity and lack of self-consciousness. Collectively, they demonstrate O’Shea’s ability to combine the bleak and the joyful.

Dublin Bus, 1989

As an editor at the magazine In Dublin in the late 1970s, Colm Tóibín sent O’Shea out on Dublin buses to capture the life of the city from the upper deck. Read more by Tim Adams in the Observer on this image of two boys and a kestrel here

Welcoming home the Irish team after reaching the quarter-finals of Italia ’90, Dublin, 1990

Ireland broke a record by making it to the quarter finals without winning a match in normal time. They were eventually beaten 1-0 by the hosts, Italy.

Christmas Turkey Market, Mary’s Lane, Dublin 1991

O’Shea’s photographs take in everyday life in markets and on bus journeys.

Reopening of crossing on the Leitrim-Fermanagh border, 1993

‘Tony O’Shea is interested in the moment where the ritual and the casual face each other in the complex light that comes from Irish skies. He likes gatherings and public spaces. And he is watching for the second when, even if his subjects are performing, a guard has been let down, and the camera becomes an uneasy, tentative, hesitant window into the soul’ - Colm Tóibín.

Day of action to reopen a border road closed by British security forces near Kiltyclogher, County Leitrim 1993

‘He seeks images of individual loneliness and isolation, figures in a state of reverie and contemplation, or figures in a state of excitement’ – Colm Tóibín.

25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Derry 1997

An exhibition of O’Shea’s work at the Gallery of Photography Ireland in Dublin is planned for early 202.

In 2016, Andrew Woodyatt started working at the Rio cinema in Dalston, Hackney, London. Handed a large bunch of keys, and blessed with a healthy curiosity, he started to explore the Rio’s basement rooms, which had been used for years for storage. Among the broken hoovers and discarded paperwork, he started to come across negatives – local street scenes shot on film strips, which seemed interesting enough to save. Then he hit the jackpot. Opening a rusty filing cabinet, he found 10,000 frames, mounted on glass slides and neatly organised into folders, some with labels such as “NHS”, “Greenham Common” and “Colin Roach”. “I just thought ‘Wow!’” says Woodyatt, who also lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Woodyatt had stumbled across the remains of the Rio Tape/Slide Newsreel Group, a project that ran at the Rio from 1982 until 1988, facilitated by a young woman called Sandra Hooper. The aim of the project was simple – to give local people audio equipment, cameras and training so they could make newsreels about their area, which would be shown at the cinema before the films. Only a couple of the newsreels have survived and none of the audio recordings, but the photographs are a thought-provoking dive into a tumultuous time in Hackney – and in Britain.

Margaret Thatcher had been in power since 1979, and unemployment had reached over three million; relations between minorities and the police were still strained after the race riots of 1981. The 1984-85 miners’ strike pitted workers and their unions against the government, and Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s bullish approach to the cold war sparked off fears of a nuclear war. Those who were poor started to feel disenfranchised, and people in Hackney were among them. The area around the Rio was famed for its bad housing, in which young squatters took over empty, rotting properties; it was also known for its longstanding openness to immigrants, who faced the sharp end of racism and discrimination. “These were tough times,” says Woodyatt. “In the early 80s, more than half the tickets sold at the Rio had an unemployed discount.

But Hackney didn’t take it lying down, with protests and community groups regularly calling for change. The file Woodyatt found labelled NHS showed protests against cuts organised by the Hackney Health Emergency, for example, while the Greenham Common folder showed support for the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, set up in 1981 in opposition to nuclear weapons placed at the RAF base. The Colin Roach file showed some of the many protests demanding a public inquiry into the death of the 21-year-old black British man in nearby Stoke Newington police station on 12 January 1983. Other images show demonstrations against council spending cuts, deportations and evictions; or collections of money or food for the miners.

There are also happier or more everyday images, taken on the street, on buses, in community groups or at festivals, some showing people looking happy, industrious or cool, others focusing on cars, shop fronts, markets and housing estates. Some show shady scenes, such as a police stop-and-search that escalated into a major incident – images that MP Brian Sedgemore used to make a case against dogs in local policing. Other images testify to the very real poverty experienced in Hackney at the time, as well as the amazing mix of residents.

That mix was reflected in The Rio Tape/Slide Newsreel Group. Run for two hours every Thursday afternoon in term time, its participants were often out of work or only casually employed, and in their teens to early 30s; other than that, they came from a wide variety of communities and backgrounds, be that black, white, gay, straight, working or middle class. Their differences didn’t impede their work. “It was great!” says Dee Phillips, who grew up in the area and took part. “Everyone had a great sense that everybody, young or old, would have their say, and that their contribution was just as important. Everybody had a voice.”

“It felt very open,” says Hooper. “We always met at the beginning of the allocated two-hour class, and we would spend the time talking about what we wanted to cover and how to do it. I don’t think there was any sort of difficult, conflicting opinions – that was one of the things that made it work. The nature of the project interested people who were open to thinking about things.”

And that open-mindedness was key, because it was also in the project’s nature to be alternative. Run by locals for locals, in a very multicultural community facing severe deprivation, it included topics that didn’t make it into the national or even local press, and a perspective from outside the establishment. The group presented the views of squatters at a time when Hackney Council was sealing up empty properties (though the Labour council was also considered so radical that some newspapers tagged it “loony left”). Kath Hornak, for example, squatted in Hackney for over three years, and was photographed protesting at the town hall about access to housing. “I saw many evictions,” she says, “and I was shocked to see the council then go in and smash up the toilets and sinks to make the place uninhabitable.”

The newsreels also reported why the family of Colin Roach – who died after two gunshots to the head – wanted an inquest into his death, at a time when, according to those involved, other newspapers simply regurgitated the official line. “The press in the main took the perspective that the guy had walked into a police station and killed himself,” says Ngoma Bishop, who was part of the Roach Family Support Committee. “How did they know this? The police had told them. The police, from the night of Colin’s death, started to put out their narrative, so people would think he was some guy from Hackney with mental illness. We had to counter that, so we organised a press conference at a community centre. The press listened, and wrote things we hadn’t said at all.”

That sense of polyphony, of alternative perspectives, underpins The Rio Tape/Slide Archive, a forthcoming book put together by Woodyatt with three others – Alan Denney, a local photographer and historian who took on the monumental task of cleaning and scanning the slides; Tamara Stoll, a photographer and artist who specialises in community projects; and Max Leonard, a writer and publisher. All four live in Hackney – Leonard grew up there, and Denney moved there in the 1980s – and the book includes an essay by Woodyatt on the history of the Rio, and another by Denney on the context of 1970s and 80s community photography. There are also introductions by Michael Rosen and Zawe Ashton, both of whom lived in Hackney. But other than that, it’s the people who were involved with Hackney and the Rio Tape/Slide Newsreel Group who tell their stories, via a series of oral histories.

“It seemed fitting,” says Leonard. “I write books, but I didn’t want to write this one – I didn’t want to put my own voice in there. We wanted to let different people put different points of view, especially as the book is about lots of different communities and protests and politics.”

These interviews also put the images into context, helping ensure the social and political era in which they were made is clear, and the issues and perspectives they presented aren’t written out of history. These issues and perspectives feel relevant again now, against a backdrop of movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, and for Phillips, that’s bittersweet. “Nurses fighting for fair pay, representation of race and class – all those issues are part of the here and now,” she says. “These problems are still here. It doesn’t feel we have moved on, and that makes me sad.

“But I’m happy people will know that we, as a group, were concerned, and did try to let people know what was going on. I look back with fond memories. It was a brave time.”

• The Rio Tape/Slide Archive Book is out this week, published by Isola Press

• The Hackney in the 1980s exhibition is available to visit in person at Hackney Museum. For more information on how to book a free slot, click here. A live-streamed opening event will be held online on Thursday 29 October from 6pm-7pm. Tickets are free. To book, visit Eventbrite.