Crisis of school education in Sri Lanka

By Dr. S. Sivasegaram-December 18, 2017, 12:00 pm 

[Primary and secondary education in Sri Lanka, once a leader among Asian countries in literacy and school education, are now in crisis owing to decades of callous neglect.]

Continued from yesterday

Private tuition

Private tuition has reached a stage where private tutories engage in education on a scale comparable with that in schools. Tutories are purely examination oriented and coach students for examinations, thus hurting incentive for self study and search for knowledge.

The profit motive of tutories induces corruption in examinations; and large tutories rely on the underworld to sustain their business and keep down competition.

School teachers also engage in private tuition, although not in tutories, to the detriment of school teaching.

Most tutories lack sanitary facilities and function outside normal teaching hours. The lack of monitoring puts the students at risk of exposure to criminal acts including child abuse and use of drugs.

Private tutors including school teachers also publish textbooks and books of model answers to ‘supplement’ the textbooks and teacher’s guides supplied free of charge by the state. The quality of the material supplied is questionable, but students are under pressure even from their teachers to purchase them.

Private tuition has undermined not just proper school education but also the aim of the government to provide free school education for all.

Brand names and oversize schools

Reputed schools exist in very nearly every district. The state built over 50 Central Colleges in the five years preceding independence to ensure wide access to quality education. There are now 323 national schools with enrolment above 2000, and leading schools among them have enrolment well exceeding 3000 to be as high as 8000.This is the result of the illusion among many parents that their children receive the best education in the country in these schools.

Enrolment exceeding 2000 is not conducive to healthy interaction among students. However, according to media reports, popular schools meet demand for admission by increasing class size, nominally at 35 (already a large number by international standards) to exceed 45, with size well exceeding 50 in the lowest form.

Excessive enrolment has also meant inadequate facilities for sports and recreation and a decline in the use of library facilities.

Demand for admission to leading schools has led to scandalous levels of bribery of school administrators, which undermines their authority.

Mushrooming of International Schools

Private missionary schools co-existed with state-assisted schools until the state took over the latter in 1960.Some assisted schools opted to go private and the country now has 33 private autonomous schools and 33 state-assisted non-fee levying private schools.

The open economic policy of 1978enabled private education in the name of "International Schools" teaching in the English Medium with curricula not linked to national education goals. These costly profit-oriented ventures do not always assure academic quality.

Lack of school discipline

Breakdown in student discipline is serious; and notorious in leading schools. Difficulty in controlling large classes is aggravated by political meddling and pressure from influential parents, while private tuition encourages truancy and disregard for school learning.

Alcoholism prevails among senior students and drug abuse exists in schools. But the school is unable to do much because the teachers as a group seem unable maintain discipline. Practice of private tuition by teachers is a further factor weakening their authority.

The public tends to blame the education system for the deterioration in moral standards in society. While the school system cannot be blamed for all social evils, it has notably failed to cultivate in students a spirit of tolerance and acceptance towards others.

Overemphasis of examination performance

A highly worrying aspect of education in the country is overemphasis of performance at written examinations. School children face three public examinations of which the value of two is questionable.

The Grade 5 Scholarship examination was initially meant for students from backward schools seeking places in reputed schools. In recent years that purpose has been distorted: children from all schools sit the examination, and rather as a talent contest among leading schools. The success rate, based on qualification for admission to National Schools, is low, making a vast majority of children ‘failures’ with adverse emotional implications.

The GCE O-L certificate offered employment prospects some years ago. But now the GCE O-L results are used mainly to stream the nearly 50% who qualify to follow the GCE A-L classes.

GCE A-L results decide admission to institutions for higher education. Despite a success rate of over 60%, less than 17% find places in state universities but, for a vast majority, not for the desired programmes.

Implications of competition

Children of tender age are made to compete for admission to reputed schools and then at Grade 5. Anxious parents arrange private tutoring for the children at the expense of valuable leisure time, thus distorting their social life and robbing them of play, playmates and social skills.

Children spend time comparable with school hours in private tuition to prepare for GCE (O-L) and GCE (O-L). Emphasis on learning has given way to committing text to memory to reproduce at examinations and training to solve problems of set pattern.

Competition has hurt friendly relations between students who see each other as a rival, and led to malpractices such as impersonation and cheating at examinations.

The issues listed above comprise commonly observed issues and are symptoms of an underlying malaise. The NEC Report on General Education draws attention to a fundamental weakness in the education system, namely that, despite students’ only learning facts for reproduction at public examinations to obtain high grades, the results are not encouraging. It also draws attention to complaints by employers that the output from the education system lacks basic competencies required by the workplace, and points to the thriving private tuition industry parallel to the formal school system which, besides high cost to parents, is a barrier to children enjoying their childhood, as their leisure time is spent in uncomfortable tutories, often with anti-social influences. It also notes that children hardly engage in physical exercises or games essential for physical and personality development.

Several other serious consequences of the perversion of school education are not commented on in that context. The rise in obesity among school children has as much to do with lack of physical activity owing to lack of time and space to play as with bad eating habits. Indiscipline and anti-social behaviour too have their roots in the perception of the worth of the school in the education process.

Addressing the crisis

There is much awareness of inadequate allocation offends for education, and political parties pledge spending 6% of the GNP on education. (In the past decade, education expenditure fell from 3.3% to 1.8% compared with 2.4 for defence). But there is inadequate public pressure on government to increase education allocation. This is partly owing to the middle class having accepted private tuition, which undermines the very principle of free education as a central aspect of the education system.

Priority is for competition for places in reputed schools and for admission to prestigious university degree programmes. Those with means tend to send their children abroad or admit them to one of several local ‘branches’ of foreign universities with little idea of the kind of education that the children receive. The controversial arrival of private universities is seen as a less expensive option by many parents.

The root of the crisis lies in the understanding of the purpose of education by parents and children alike and a general lack of imagination about profitable careers other than in well established disciplines in some form of hierarchical order.

The school education system is flawed as its emphasis is on the 5% or so who can enter university. The 30% or so of school leavers― eligible for university admission but denied access ―are left on their own to seek avenues besides all manner of private higher education. The school and the society see 95% of the students as ‘failures’. This matter needs to be addressed from the early years of schooling. In other words, the school should identify for children careers that suit their interests and potential, are beneficial to them, and useful to society.

While investment in school infrastructure and personnel are important, resources can be put to maximum benefit only through instilling in the minds of teachers, students and parents the purpose of education as a social tool for producing responsible citizens with a sense of belonging and commitment to community.

Many educationists have pointed to the lack of knowledge of English among school leavers. They see it as a fundamental flaw because of their perception of English as the sole window to advanced knowledge. But they ignore other countries big and small which are economically and industrially advanced that provide school education in the mother tongue. Freeing ourselves of such colonial mindset is important―but that does not mean rejection of English as a useful language. We need to elevate the use of the native languages to meet the growing demands of modernity. Switching to English medium education has, predictably, failed to produce results since the emphasis on English disregards difficulties faced in learning in an alien language.

This brings us to another badly misunderstood purpose of education, namely producing people who can find employment in the global employment market. This is an unhealthy outcome of the open economic policy followed since 1978, when the notion of a national economy was rejected in the interest of the open economic policy with unrestricted inflow of foreign capital and goods.

While investment in school infrastructure, educational reforms and decentralization of the education system are important, integration of education with national needs should be a priority whose achievement demands a healthier approach to education at public level and greater involvement of the public in education policy and process.

Note

[The National Education Commission published its Proposals for a National Policy on General Education in Sri Lanka early in 2017. Implementation of the Proposals depends entirely on how seriously the government takes the matter of school education. Recent developments, however, offer little reason for optimism.]