Thai education system

Dldr; Is the system knowingly broken to prevent widespread basic education?

This is half rant and half conversation starter. It might be a little rambly or disorganized sorry. Struggling to deal with some aspects of the Thai education system (high school) and had a really cynical thought. I can't stop going back to it now. First, the problem is this... Married my wife and after the appropriate number of years passed for the family to believe I wasn't going to wander off we set about moving the children from a rural province to a small city. The education the kids were getting in the province was pretty bad (as well as some domestic issues) and, frankly, I want these kids to be successful so they can take care of me when I am old. 555 Anyway, back in August/September we were told the highschool kid needed to wait for the next term in March. She is 15. We had already waited a term for some obscure Thai reason I don't understand and so it was decided to move the small kids and let the highschool kid finish out the term living with family. Not ideal, but there are 5 kids and we didn't want 4 of them to miss another year because of an administrative issue with one.
Fast forward to now and we are being told by the schools they are all full and there is no waiting list or mechanism for enrollment- basically just fuck off. An agency is telling me that it is imporrible for a student who did not test 7 months previously to enroll... But when we first tried this in the early fall there was no mention of testing. And the idea that "all the seats are taken and there is no way for students to replace kids who don't finish or start is so backwards I can't wrap my head around it. I've also been told that many students register at multiple schools and then decide where to go last minute- so each of these should represent potential empty seats as well. It is very frustrating. Anyway, I made a comment that the system should serve the people rather than the people serving the system and then it hit me. 60% of Thailand's economy is factories and agriculture. If all these kids learn to read, use computers, and apply critical thinking where will they find people who think it makes sense to mortgage the family farm to open a noodle stand that will generate half a mortgage payment? Is the system knowingly broken to prevent widespread basic education??