Research on soft skills in developing countries remains limited, and much of what we think we know comes from studies in very different educational systems. This paper uses data from 1006 Grade 9 students in Thailand, collected by the Equitable Education Fund (EEF), to examine whether gender, school type, and regional location are reflected across eight domains of soft-skill development. We combine simple descriptive comparisons with regression models and propensity score matching, mainly to see whether the broad patterns stay the same when the data are approached in different ways. The results challenge what many policy discussions anticipate. Gender differences are small and often disappear once controls are added. By contrast, the gaps linked to school context and region are substantial and persistent across analytical approaches. Students in opportunity-expansion schools record lower scores in several domains, and children in the Northeastern region show even wider shortfalls. These patterns are consistent across methods and substantially larger than any associations with gender. The analysis underscores that institutional conditions, particularly in less advantaged regions, play a larger role in shaping soft skills than gender-targeted initiatives.
Kiatanantha Lounkaew (Fri,) studied this question.