A Decision Model to Predict the Selection of Education Streams – A Case Study for Trang Province, Thailand

Abstract

The research aims to develop a classification model to predict students’ decisions relating to which education stream to follow and to identify the relevant factors to such decision-making. The model created used the decision tree (DT) technique with data collected from 800 samples of year-10 students in Trang province, Thailand. Of those, 428 had decided to study in general education while the other 372 were studying vocational courses. This study identified six relevant variables, which were influential in students’ decision making; comprising students' academic performance (i.e., mathematical cumulative grade point average in junior high school; science cumulative grade point average in junior high school; and grade point average for all subjects in junior high school); parents' education and profession (i.e., father's level of education; mother’s occupation); and students’ gender. In terms of performance and employment, the DT model has high performance regarding sensitivity and g-mean. Moreover, it has advantages compared to the other models.