Two sets of rules, and only one of them is ours

The rules that actually apply

The district competition is run by OBEC, and its rules are OBEC's. We do not set them, we cannot bend them, and a child is judged against them and nothing on this page.

Then there is the video round and the live final in Khon Kaen, which are ours. Those rules are further down, clearly separated, so nobody confuses the two.

สรุปสั้น ๆ

การแข่งขันระดับเขตพื้นที่ใช้เกณฑ์ของ สพฐ. ไม่ใช่กติกาของเว็บนี้ · คะแนนเต็ม 100 แบ่งเป็น เนื้อเรื่อง 35 · การใช้ภาษา 60 · การรักษาเวลา 5 · ต้องส่งบทนิทาน 5 ชุด ให้กรรมการล่วงหน้า 1 วันก่อนวันแข่งขัน · ห้ามใช้เอกสาร อุปกรณ์ประกอบ หรือเครื่องมือสื่อสารบนเวที · แต่งเครื่องแบบนักเรียน

Part one · OBEC's rules for the district round

How Story Telling is actually scored

This surprises almost everybody, including us. We had it wrong on this site until September 25, 2026, and a child who prepared from our earlier version would have prepared for the wrong competition.

ComponentThaiPoints
The story itself — content, structure, interestเนื้อเรื่อง35
Vocabulary and sentence structureคำศัพท์และโครงสร้าง20
Pronunciationการออกเสียง20
Voice — tone, expression, deliveryน้ำเสียง20
Keeping to timeการรักษาเวลา5
Total100

Sixty of the hundred points are the English. Vocabulary, pronunciation and voice together outweigh the story by a wide margin. If you are coaching a child, that is where the hours go — and it is the reason we built a pronunciation clinic rather than a storytelling app.

Earlier this page said language accuracy was worth only 15 points. That was taken from an unadopted draft document and it was wrong. Corrected September 25, 2026, by our own re-checking — which is exactly why we publish sources.

Age bands and time limits

OBEC's national criteria set three bands. A fourth, ป.1–3, exists as an event code on the registration platform but is not run by every district — some open it, some mark it ไม่มีการแข่งขัน. Check your own district's event list before assuming.

BandTimeWhere it runs
ป.4–65–6 minutesEvery primary district office (สพป.)
ม.1–36–7 minutesสพป. (extension schools) and สพม.
ม.4–67–8 minutesSecondary offices (สพม.) only
ป.1–3variesSome districts only — check your district's list

Thirty seconds either side of the band is free. Beyond that the penalty is one point per minute, out of the five points allotted to timekeeping.

The things that disqualify people

  1. The script goes to the judges one day before the competition, not on the day. Five copies. This is the single most common way to lose a place before saying a word, and we had it wrong here too until September 25, 2026.
  2. Nothing in the hands and nothing on the stage. No notes, no cue cards, no props, no costume pieces, no puppets, no music, no phone or any other communication device.
  3. School uniform. Not a costume, not the story's character, not something bought for the occasion.
  4. One child, alone. No accompanying voice, no chorus, no teacher prompting from the front row.

Medals go by score, not by rank: 80 and above is gold, 70–79 silver, 60–69 bronze, and below 60 receives a certificate of participation. Several children in the same room can all take gold, and often do — there is no fixed number of winners.

OBEC's own criteria provide a medal and a certificate. There is no prize money anywhere in them. An individual school, an alumni association or a local sponsor may of course add something of their own, and some do — but nothing in the national rules pays a child anything.

Part two · our rules, for the video round and the final

These ones are ours, and we can change them

Everything above belongs to OBEC. Everything below is USAEnglish, and applies only to the free video round and the live final in Khon Kaen in April 2027.

  1. Who may enter. Any child who took a gold medal in Story Telling, ป.4–6, at their own district round in ปีการศึกษา 2569. Nothing else qualifies, and we verify the medal with the school before judging.
  2. What to send. One unedited take of the same story, filmed sideways, whole child in frame, within the 5–6 minute band with thirty seconds' grace. Nothing else on screen — no captions, no music, no school name.
  3. When. By March 31, 2027.
  4. How it is judged. On the same rubric OBEC uses, so that preparing for one prepares for the other. Judging is blind: the panel sees an entry number, an age band and a story.
  5. How many go to Khon Kaen. Ten. We expect a great many more gold medalists than that, so most children who send a video will not travel. We would rather say so here than imply otherwise.
  6. The final. The same story, told live, on the same hundred points, in front of an audience and three judges whose names we publish. Scores are published by entry number.
  7. What every entrant gets. Their scores, sent back to the school, whether or not they are selected.

Our printable score sheet, on this page, uses OBEC's hundred points — the same five lines as the table above — so a child can be marked at home, at school and in Khon Kaen on one scale.

If something here is wrong, tell us

We have now had to correct this page twice. The rules are published in Thai in OBEC criteria books that change between editions, and we are two people reading them. A correction is a favor.

How to enter Tell us we are wrong

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