Thailand's Equitable Education Fund — From SIM-Card Access to AI-Driven Learning Pathways for At-Risk Students

Thailand's Equitable Education Fund (EEF), a government-linked body established under the 2018 Equitable Education Act, has spent several years tackling the digital divide facing poor and rural students, identified during the COVID-19 pandemic as up to ten times more disadvantaged than their peers in access to devices and connectivity.

The 'SIM 2 Learn' programme, run with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission and telecom partner Infinite Sim, aimed to give free-data SIM cards to Grade 6–9 students, alongside a LINE-based support channel ('@sim2learn') offering career guidance, mental-health support and scholarship information.

EEF is now developing AI systems that draw on individual student risk profiles, community-level socio-economic data from Thailand's Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, and scholarship-opportunity data to generate personalised learning-pathway recommendations for disadvantaged students, aiming to convert access into sustained engagement.

Distribution of the SIM cards reached more than 400,000 eligible students nationwide, but only 113,000 registered for the service and just 18,000 went on to actively use it for learning — evidence, EEF's Research Director said, that 'even when we remove the financial barriers to internet access, other invisible barriers remain,' including digital literacy gaps and low motivation.

The AI pathway-recommendation system is newly described and has not yet been independently evaluated; the only rigorously quantified figures available concern the prior SIM-card programme's usage funnel, which itself shows a programme still finding its footing rather than a proven success.