this chapter reviews thailand s teacher and principal preparation licensing assessment and continuing development policies and the structures and organisations that support them it identifies five policy issues that may be preventing the development of a highquality education profession inadequate teacher preparation programmes a lack of a strategic approach to teachers professional development administrative burdens keeping teachers away from the classroom no strategic framework to support the development of school leaders and a fragmented approach to data management and teacher deployment making it harder to tackle teacher shortages this should be developed in consultation with teachers school leaders and their associations teacher funding and deployment should better reflect local needs to ensure all students are taught by highly qualified and highquality teachers