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| Image from: https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2018/10/17/three-decades-of-support-to-improve-sri-lankas-education |
Ratnasiri Arangala, A. M. Navaratna
Bandara, Michael Fernando, Wipula Karunathilake, Mohammed Mahees, Sasanka
Perera,
Jayadeva Uyangoda,
Sri Lanka’s entire system of education, at pre-school, primary, secondary
and tertiary levels, has been facing multiple crises. Attempts made in the
recent past to address some aspects of these crises have either succeeded only
partially, or failed altogether.
The persistence of these multiple crises has also generated new
interest in educational reforms among Sri Lanka’s presidential candidates in
the 2019 Presidential Campaign.
It is reported that the main presidential candidates have assigned the
responsibility to design policies on education to their own groups of advisors.
Their proposals are probably included in their election manifestoes and campaign
promises.
Renewal of such interest in resolving the ever-sharpening crisis of
education would be meaningful only if new ideas lead to transformative policy
reforms.
We are a group of professionals deeply committed to reforming and
strengthening Sri Lanka’s education at all levels. In this context, our
intention is to present a few approaches that we believe will lead our
country’s system of education out of these multiple crises.
We offer the following brief analysis and agenda for reform to the
attention of all presidential candidates, their committees of advisors, political
parties they represent and, last but not the least, citizens and voters of the
country, for reflection and action.
Current Crisis
Sri Lanka’s current state of crisis in education has been ably explained
by researchers and policy experts in a variety of ways, drawing attention to its
many dimensions. We wish to highlight the following anomalies that have made
the overall crisis of education intractable. Their resolution indeed calls for
major policy interventions spread over short-term, medium-term and long-term
basis:
- The ever-increasing social
demand for school, tertiary and higher education continues to remain only
partially met. This is a condition caused by the severe incapacity of the existing
state-run educational system for further expansion, modernization, quality
improvement, and fulfilling social aspirations.
- Progressive decline of the
quality and standards of education provided at all levels in the state sector
is further hastened by the ad hoc and hurriedly designed responses to meeting
the increasing demands for education. The growing mismatch between expansion
and quality is observable in the school, vocational as well as university
education.
- Early childhood education
continues to remain an informal and ad hoc branch of education with no policy
towards accreditation of service providers. It lacks an active and robust involvement
of the Ministry of Education in monitoring quality, standards, the type of
education, facilities available, prevailing hygienic conditions, child
protection, services in place, and professionalism of teachers. As a result,
this sector has become a huge, yet unorganized sector of education. In instances where quality education is
provided, the fees are high and unaffordable to most parents. Poor nutritional conditions
among the school children, particularly due to increasing economic hardships
experienced by the low income and lower middle class families, is a forgotten
policy issue. The prevalence of poor nutrition extends even to students in
universities and tertiary educational institutions where the majority come from
low income social backgrounds.
- Improvements in school
education are severely hampered by the state of stagnation in professionalism
among most of the schoolteachers in their teaching, training, evaluation and
mentoring skills. Most teachers practice only one, and of course wrong,
teaching method. It involves (a) dictating notes to students, (b) forcing
students to memorize model answers and repeat them at public examinations, and
(c) persuading students to prepare only for the so-called target questions.
- Schoolteachers in general are
also handicapped by not having opportunities to update their subject knowledge,
or acquire new skills. As a consequence, they fail to inspire students for
creativity.
- The involvement of private
sector to provide parallel education opportunities has led to many distortions
and negative outcomes about the goals and benefits of education. Rising cost of
education caused by the entry of an un-governed tuition industry has severely
undermined the very idea of free education. It has also created a state of
anarchy in school education.
- The unchecked proliferation of
profit-seeking private educational institutions, without any regulatory
framework in place, has led to new disparities in the access to and benefits
from the private sector-led education. At present, there are no government
mechanisms to ensure quality and standards of education and training provided
as well as assessments and examinations conducted by these institutions. Thus,
they have the potential to undermine the social mission of education as a
civilizational resource.
- The incapacity of the industry
in both the state and the non-state sectors as well as the economy to generate
adequate employment opportunities for the educated youth at all levels continues
unchecked. The proliferation of private higher educational institutions caters
primarily to very limited segments of society. This situation is likely to
sharpen the social disparities in the access to employment both in state and
private sectors.
- The entire sector of higher
education stagnates in a grossly outdated model of university undergraduate institutions
inaugurated as far back as the early 1940s. It sought to produce recruits for
the public sector as well as medical and technical professions. No effort so
far has been made by any government to change and modernize this relic from the
colonial past.
- There have been many ad hoc and
costly responses to periodic pressures from global economic and labour market
trends. Such reform measures implemented
in school and university education have systematically ignored locally
generated visions and perspectives for sustainable rebuilding of the country’s
education. The neglect of constructive inputs from local intelligentsia and
their resultant apathy for change in the educational sector has led to the lack
of participation by the direct stakeholder communities.
- Sri Lanka has not yet succeeded
in developing and supporting its Tertiary and Vocational Educational Training
(TVET) sector into a robust and forward - looking branch of education. It is
expected to serve the employment aspirations of young school leavers around the
age of sixteen. However, it fails to attract them in adequate numbers. Among
the reasons are: (a) unattractiveness of courses and training it offers to the
new generation of the youth, (b) absence of a system of adequate financial
support for students, (c) failure to cater to the needs and vocational
aspirations of women students, and, (d) conservative nature of the overall educational
outlook that is not yet ready to respond to the challenges and opportunities of
the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
- Policy-thinking for
transformative reforms in the education sector is also blocked by the narrowly
politicized reactions by a range of vested interests. Prominent among them are
various post-Independence governments, political parties, and teacher unions,
and student unions. Similarly, the
continuous failure by the academic communities and their professional
associations to offer research-based alternative policy options has made public
discourse on educational reforms poorer.
- Gender composition of student
populations in school, university and vocational sectors is changing rapidly due
to the higher participation of women than men in almost all levels of education
and in most fields. This is a major facet of democratization of education in
Sri Lanka. However, educational institutions as well as the labour markets have
not yet made meaningful adjustments to accommodate this demographic change.
Facilities available at educational institutions are still insensitive to the
needs of the majority of students who are women.
- Vocational training is still conventional in orientation that
re-affirms gender stereotyping. There are no incentives for women students to
join the vocational fields that have traditionally been reserved for men. The
field of employment continues to discriminate educated and professionally
qualified women in recruitment as well as promotion.
- The present state of dispersal
of institutional responsibilities for educational reforms among key government
institutions is a major handicap for policy innovation. This fact also remains
unacknowledged. Policy-making and implementation in education is spread across
a vast institutional scheme. It covers the office of the President, office of
the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Higher
Education, Provincial Councils, University Grants Commission, National
Education Commission, and National Institute of Education.
- This state of diffusion of responsibilities calls for an institutional focal point for coordinating the process of policy-making and guiding policy implementation.
A Long-Term Vision
We stress that a policy vision with commitment to effective implementation
is needed to take Sri Lanka’s education out of the present crisis and re-orient
its future developmental path. Such a vision requires a democratic political
leadership that can establish a broad coalition of stakeholder communities along
with a commitment to championing a process of nation-building though modernizing
Sri Lanka’s education at all levels.
Such a modernizing vision should contain the following normative
principles and strategic considerations:
- Education is a fundamental
right of all. It is the duty and obligation of the state to ensure that all
citizens have access not just to education, but to quality education without discrimination or deprivation on any
basis.
- Education is a vital means for
social transformation, social equality, social mobility, democratic
citizenship, pluralistic nation-building, and realization of individual and
community aspirations. Thus, preserving and promoting the capacity and role of
education as the driving force for positive social change as well as individual
and social upliftment should be integral to the social contact between the
government and citizens. This calls for a
clear commitment on the part of policy-makers that equity matters at all levels
of education.
- However, such responses should be carefully formulated by taking into account local conditions. Further, these responses need to be transformed into policy and implemented without causing new waves of social exclusion, group marginalization, political upheavals or national crises. That calls for building broad social and stakeholder coalitions through dialogue for major policy reforms in education.
- Any new reform should also
reflect the reality that Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and
multi-lingual society. Educational reforms at all levels should be guided by a
vision for building citizens for a democratic society with pluralistic values.
- Sri Lanka’s education needs to respond to new demands from global economic change, industrial and technological revolutions, and restructuring of labour markets. A new emphasis on vocational and professional educational needs to be carefully calibrated with the school and university education. For its success, active collaboration between different agencies representing the state and non-state sectors as well as the external donor community will be needed.
A Framework for Short and Medium Term Action
We propose the following actions for policy intervention which also
reflect the current thinking among many reform constituencies in our society. They
point to policy innovation, and building new institutions while re-building and
reforming the existing ones. These are measures that require clarity of objectives
with a vision for preventing bureaucratization. Sustainability of reforms as
proposed below also calls for building broad stakeholder coalitions. Continuous
dialogue with stakeholders should be built into the strategy of managing change
in all areas of the educational sector.
Early Childhood Education
Policy Challenge
The Early Childhood Education (ECE) is a vast and still expanding
sector in Sri Lanka’s education. It is presently run and managed by individual
initiatives with small-scale private investment. The absence of state investment,
lack of a clear legal framework to govern the provision of ECE and the
implementation of existing ECE policies, weak mechanisms for monitoring and
enforcing compliance, and the absence of quality assurance in all its aspects
are crucial issues that require solutions.
Reform Proposals
- Steps should be taken to ensure
quality assurance in the services provided by the sector of early childhood
education which presently operates on a semi-informal basis.
- Strengthen the existing
institutional mechanisms maintained by the Provincial Councils by formulating national
standards. A scheme for accreditation of service providers for early childhood
education
,along with licensing the institutions as well as teachers, should be designed. - Streamline early childhood
education with greater emphasis on training and professionalization for service
providers and particularly teachers.
- An institutional framework to monitor, support, improve, and
sustain the sector of early childhood education should be introduced. An Early
Childhood Education Authority should be established with a mandate to work in
collaboration with Provincial Councils and Local Government bodies.
- The above can be implemented by taking the following steps: (a) the Government empower the Authority to formulate guidelines for teacher recruitment, training of teachers, formulation of syllabi and teaching methods, management of pre-schools, school space and facilities and equipment needs; (b) This Authority vests some of these responsibilities in the Provincial Councils and local government bodies to be carried out under its supervision; (c) Adding the kindergarten class into the national primary school system run by the state.
School Education
Policy Challenge
The crisis of school education sector is multi-faceted and pervasive. The
school education sector is also influenced by a vast array of stakeholders with
competing interests and agendas. Much
needed structural reforms in this sector need to be carried out with strategies
to manage resistance to reform by diverse interest groups. That requires
sustained dialogue between policy-makers and groups who may have dissenting
views.
Reform Proposals
- Re-think and reforming the social and policy utility of Grade Five
Scholarship examination: The government should
design in its place a new scheme, without its highly demanding, commercialized and
oppressive examination mechanism. The new scheme should provide (a) enhanced financial
assistance to needy children of low-income families, and (b) better schools for
meritorious and highly promising students within each province. Beneficiaries should be identified by means of a combination of
national level and improved, transparent and abuse-free school-based
assessments, conducted within each province.
- Once the above (a) and (b) are implemented, a scholarship
examination only for needy students and an admission examination for
meritorious students from under-equipped rural and urban schools should be
introduced.
- Re-structuring the present General Certificate of Education - Advanced
Level Examination: This should be done by introducing
two examinations at Year 13. One examination will enable students to obtain national-level
school leaving certificates for early employment and vocational training. The other
examination will qualify students for higher education in universities and other
higher educational institutions.
- Better Vocational Education for School Leavers: Introduce on a priority
basis a system of vocational education and training that are well-planned and
sustainable for students leaving school after Year 13. It should aim at qualifying
the school-leavers for employment in national and global labour markets.
Financial collaboration from the private sector through public-private
partnership should be secured for this since the private sector would be its
primary beneficiary.
- Re-orienting post-primary school education: The present system of post-primary education should be re-oriented
towards creatively integrating mathematics, science, social studies, civics,
aesthetics, value education, English, and a Second National Language in the
school curriculum.
- Restructuring G. C. E (Advanced Level) Curriculum Framework: Re-design the present scheme of General Certificate of Education - Advanced
Level subject streams as Arts, Physical Science, Biological Science, Commerce,
and Technology by (a) doing away with the existing system of strict
compartmentalization of subject streams, and (b) making inter-stream mobility
through a flexible system of course modules possible. The Advanced Level curriculum should be redesigned on the basis of a
module-based credit system. The new system should enable preferred combinations
of modules spread across core subjects and subsidiary subjects.
- Introducing Student Counselling: Make
student advising and counselling mandatory in schools. Creative redesigning of
senior secondary school education, as suggested above, necessarily requires the
provision of student advising and counselling.
- Introducing Value Education: Re-orient
the school subject of Religion towards an emphasis on inter-religious value
education. Religious education should focus on basic principles of philosophies
and ethical doctrines, and not rituals, of major religions practiced by
citizens of Sri Lanka. Appoint a committee of educationists to advise on what
philosophical and ethical content of vast bodies of religious doctrines should
be included in the limited school curricula in value education.
- Introducing the idea of Career Paths: Introduce
from Year 10 onwards the idea of future career paths and career options to
school children. It should enable parents, along with teachers, to begin to think
about and plan the children’s futures positively and knowledgably.
- Strengthening Career Guidance in Schools:
Train and establish a special cadre of schoolteachers as qualified career
guidance counsellors for schools. This calls for setting up an institute under
the Ministry of Education for training and accrediting schoolteachers for
counselling and student advising.
- Retraining and empowering teachers: Initiate
an accelerated programme of re-training and re-empowering all school teachers.
Its activities can be done through stages and by means of decentralized
initiatives with the participation of Provincial Councils. Such a program
should aim at (a) updating and enhancing teachers’ subject knowledge, and (b)
equipping them with new methodologies of teaching, assessment, and mentoring. To make this more attractive and to compensate for their time,
schoolteachers should be offered a better remuneration package plus a
performance & training-related compensation-recognition system.
- Addressing the Year 13 student absenteeism: Take immediate administrative measures to ensure that students at
Year 13 regularly attend school and that teachers conduct classes properly and
diligently in the school for Year 13 students. This should aim at ending the present apathy
and indifference shown by schoolteachers, principals and the Ministry of
Education towards the widespread problem of student absenteeism at Year 13.
- Regulating the private tuition industry: Introduce legislation to control and regularize the private tuition industry by the Ministry of Education. It should aim at (a) minimizing the share of family budget spent on education of children outside the school system, (b) restoring the lost norms of free education in the country in order to help the low and middle-income families, (c) ensuring that provision of education is not exploitative, and (d) guaranteeing that undue burdens are not placed on students via excessive training and endless rote learning for examinations.
University Education
Policy Challenge
University education is the sector that has defied any major reform
for change from its outdated goals, institutional structure and organizational
culture. Attempted and actual reforms in the university sector, from student
admission to teaching programmes and diversification of ownership, has led to
political unrest and organized resistance too.
The sector is lagging behind the country’s changing needs. It has
also been struggling to cope with new demands for change and re-orientation
emerging from national as well as global conditions. Radical and major reforms are required in the
higher educational sector. Yet, they need to be introduced and managed with a
focus on preventing disruptive consequences in the social and political
spheres.
Reform Proposals
- Restructuring the University curricula in AHSS fields: Address the challenge of providing employment to increasing
numbers of graduates in Arts, Humanities and Social Science fields As a major
policy priority, universities should be encouraged to restructure undergraduate
courses and curricula. Such restructuring should aim at qualifying graduates directly to
diverse professions in the state and non-state sectors while substantial
subject knowledge is retained in undergraduate education. That should also aim
at inculcating a more inclusive sense of public citizenship among graduates who
at present feel alienated from society.
- Restructuring the University system: Consider
restructuring the existing university system to formulate a clearly defined
college system for undergraduate education and a university system for advanced
training. The new focus should be on immediate employment with regard to
training in the former, and more advanced professional and academic training in
the latter.
- Reforming the system if career-guidance:
The MoHE, UGC and Universities should re-think the current emphasis on narrowly
conceived soft-skills training programmes through career guidance. Those
existing programmes should be strengthened through a synthesis of academic
education with training for professional careers.
- Forecasting Employment requirements of the economy: Initiate a mechanism for research-based forecasting of annual
requirements for employment in different professional fields. This should be
achieved in collaboration with the MoHE, UGC, the universities, the Ministry of
Manpower and Emploment, and Department of Census and Statistics. That should
enable to plan the expansion of university education to be planned in
conjunction with the changing realities of the labour market and trends in the
global and national economies.
- Reforming the undergraduate curricula: Encourage
the UGC and Universities to initiate curriculum reforms in the undergraduate
education to enable students of all fields to receive and benefit from a broad-based
and holistic education. It should aim at transcending the present frameworks of
Faculty and Stream-based, and narrowly conceived, academic and disciplinary compartmentalization.
- Reviewing and reforming the District Quota System: Review and revise the existing District Quota System for
university admission. The new system should enable more students from poor and
middle-income families of rural districts to enter science, medicine,
engineering and technology Faculties.
- Raising the quality and standards of teaching: Bring all systems of knowledge offered by universities at both
undergraduate and postgraduate levels closer to clearly identified global norms
and good practices. Similarly, offer adequate and closely monitored training
programs for university teachers to ensure that they can offer the training to students
at par with global norms and standards.
- Upgrading post-graduate education and training: Make it mandatory for the state universities and non-state Higher
Educational Institutions to ensure that their post-graduate programmes comply
with the authentic global norms in teaching, learning, training, research, and
publication. This calls for mechanisms for monitoring to be in place.
- Upgrading the quality of external degree programmes: Make it also mandatory for the state universities to raise the
quality and standards of the education provided to students in external degree
courses and open and distance learning programmes. This also requires
mechanisms for monitoring to be in place.
- Professional training for graduates: Establish
an institute for administrative and managerial training institute to enable
university graduates to obtain professional qualifications required for
executive and managerial professions in the state and non-state sectors. The
Ministry of Higher Education, the UGC, the Ministry of Public Administration,
the Ministry of Manpower and Employment, and the private sector should
collaborate in this initiative.
- Setting-up of a university publishing and printing service: The nonexistence of a formal academic publishing industry in the
country has negatively impacted the in-county production of serious knowledge.
In order to address this issue, explore the possibility of creating at least
one university-led non-profit publishing enterprise. It should be designed on
the models of successful university presses elsewhere in the world.
- Regulating and standardizing private educational institutions: Ensure that all private educational institutions adhere to norms and standards of quality in all their teaching and training programmes, as will be set out by the University Grants Commission through appropriate regulations. This should be done through a mechanism of monitoring and compliance.
Tertiary and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Sector
Policy Challenge
Modernizing, upgrading and strengthening of the TVET sector, to make
its doors open to large numbers of secondary school leavers, is as important as
the higher education sector. It is the sector that has untapped capacity and
potential to help policy-makers to resolve the perennial mismatch between
education and employment. Modernizing this sector requires new capital
investment, greater international support, sustainable public-private
partnerships and institutional innovation.
Reform Proposals
- Diversification of Syllabi: Diversify
the syllabi of TVET sector to accommodate new skills requirements necessitated
by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This should be done in collaboration with
the International Labour Organization.
- Regulating the informal employment sector: Introduce a scheme under the National Vocational Qualification
(NVQ) framework to gradually formalize the existing employment in the vast
informal sector. It should cover transport, motor vehicle repair and maintenance,
household-based industries, small manufacturing, domestic service, construction,
retail trade, and cleaning and sanitary service, private security industry etc.
Such a scheme should also aim at guaranteeing the employees better wages, labour
entitlements, and working conditions while introducing both employers and
workers to modern work-ethics.
- Incentives for vocational and technical trainees: Most of the TVET trainees are usually from low-income family
backgrounds. They currently receive only inadequate state financial support for
survival. Provide the TVET Trainees, in collaboration with state and non-state
sectors, improved monthly allowances during their apprenticeship period. This
should be viewed as an incentive for school leavers to join the TVET sector for
vocational training and eventual employment.
- Upgrading skills of migrant workers: Upgrade
and open the TVET sector to accommodate the currently unskilled migrant workers
to the Middle Eastern countries. Their skills should be updated to suit changes
in the labour requirements of a rapidly changing world of work.
- Training for female school leavers for non-traditional professions: Encourage more female school leavers to join the TVET sector. They should be provided training and employment opportunities beyond the vocations traditionally reserved for women. Making available to them incentives to build their careers in the fields of technology, engineering, IT etc., should also be a priority. A policy of affirmative action should be designed and implemented to achieve this objective.
Professor
Ratnasiri Arangala, University of Sri Jayawardenapura
Dr. A. M Navaratna Bandara, Formerly University of
Peradeniya
Dr. Michael Fernando, Formerly
University of Peradeniya
Wipula Karunathilake, Development
Journalist
Dr. Mohammed Mahees, University of Colombo
Professor Sasanka Perera, South Asian University, New
Delhi
Professor Jayadeva
Uyangoda, Formerly University of
Colombo
