NIE Crisis: Members Sacked After Advising Ranil To Carry Out A ‘Comprehensive Review’

July 27, 2016

The Secretary to the Ministry of Education has sacked several members from the Council of the National Institute of Education (NIE), allegedly upon orders from the Minister of Education.

According to Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, along with him, Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda, Prof. Senevi Epitawatte and Prof. Jayatillake have been sacked from the NIE Council.

Nirmal

Uyangoda

According to Devasiri, even though the NIE Council should meet once a month, no meetings have been convened since December 2015. “During the last meeting in December there was a serious dispute between us and the then Director General and the members also informed that they cannot work with the Director General,” Dewasiri, the former President of FUTA said.

In May, Dewasiri and Uyangoda wrote to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe urging him to carry out a comprehensive institutional review of all aspects in connection to the NIE.

In a letter addressed to Wickremesinghe, Members of the NIE Council, Jayadeva Uyangoda and Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, who are also senior professors of the University of Colombo also alleged that the management of the institute lacks the necessary capacity to fulfill it’s responsibilities.

“To cite the personal experience of the two of us, we have at Council meetings repeatedly offered our voluntary service to help revive the research department of the NIE, and assist launching new capacity building programmes. We have also proposed that the NIE should begin to focus on the key functions of its mandate through research, policy dialogues and greater engagement with the Ministry and the government. The response we have received so far is to continuously ignore our requests,” they said in the letter dated May 2016.

They noted that the NIE, which has been set up to function as the primary institutional link between the country’s school education and the government, with a farsighted mandate, is lacking in institutional, intellectual and managerial capacity as well as resources to fulfill its responsibilities.

“We also recognize that the NIE should not be allowed to continue to decay. It is also our view that merely changing the DG or the Council can hardly revive the NIE. The revival and revitalization of the NIE calls for a major intervention by you as the Prime Minister and by the government led by you,” they stated.

“As the first step in that direction, we would like to propose to you the need for a comprehensive institutional review of all aspects of the NIE. Such a review should include (a) updating of the need and relevance of the NIE to Sri Lanka today and tomorrow under the changing local and global conditions, (b) revisiting its existing mandate as laid down in the Act, (c) examining its functions, its organizational structure, managerial and administrative practices, (d) an assessment of its intellectual, research and other capacities, (e) human resource requirements, and (f) mapping out of its future directions. It is our view that the review committee should include (a) an international expert, preferably from UNESCO, conversant with the needs and nature of educational reforms in post-civil war and multi-ethnic societies, (b) Sri Lankan experts who have sensitivity to the challenges and role of school education in a multi-ethnic society in transition to peace and reconciliation after decades of civil war and violence,” the letter added.

We publish bellow the letter in full:
University of Colombo
Colombo -03

May 05, 2016
Honourable Ranil Wickremasinghe Esqr., M. P.
Prime Minister
Prime Minister’s Office
Temple Trees
Colombo-03

Dear Sir,

National Institute of Education-Maharagama

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