University admissions and fundamental rights

2021/06/8

The writer’s article last week on fundamental rights issues in Grade 1 admissions provoked some discussion, going by the several emails received. A senior lawyer who appears in fundamental rights cases offered to appear pro bono if the circular is challenged. There may be more such lawyers.

Over the weekend, the University Grants Commission (UGC) called for applications for university admissions. The UGC handbook on admissions lays down the applicable criteria. University admissions also give rise to fundamental rights cases every year. The Z-score system, clubbing together of students who sat for different syllabi and who sat for three and four subjects, have been challenged.

Today’s piece is on the district quota. Before 1970, all university admissions were on merit alone. The admission of more Tamil medium students—compared to the percentage of Tamils in the total population—to the science-based streams evoked calls for changes in the policy. The authorities introduced language-wise standardisation. For example, the cut-off mark for Sinhala-medium students entering the Medical Faculties in 1971 was 229, while it was 250 for Tamil-medium students. It is known that standardisation led to frustration among students and was one of the reasons that led to the radicalisation of Tamil youth, as much as unemployment among Sinhala youth was a major factor that led to the Southern insurrection of 1971.

Standardisation was replaced by district quotas in 1974. Under a scheme introduced for the 1980 admissions by the UGC, 30% of the available places were filled on the basis of island-wide merit. 55% were allocated to the 24 administrative districts that existed at that time in proportion to the total population of each district, that is on the ratio of the population of the district concerned to the total population of the country. The remaining 15% of the total available seats were distributed amongst students of 13 districts recognised as educationally disadvantaged districts. This too was allocated on the ratio of the population of each such district to the total population of the districts so recognised.

Later, admissions to the Arts stream came to be made purely on island-wide merit. The percentage taken in for all other streams based on island-wide merit was increased to 40, and the percentage reserved for disadvantaged districts reduced to 5. The total number of administrative districts is twenty-five now, of which 16 are considered disadvantaged. They are: Nuwara-Eliya, Hambantota, Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mannar, Mullaitivu, Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara, Puttalam, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Badulla, Monaragala and Ratnapura. Jaffna was added to the list after it was ravaged by the separatist war.

In Seneviratne vs. U. G. C., the decision to fill 55 per cent of the vacancies in the universities for the year 1980 on the ratio of population figures in the 24 administrative districts was challenged. The UGC contended that it had to conform to national policy and relied on the directive principles of state policy, especially those contained in Article 27(2)(b) and (h) of the Constitution relating to ‘the promotion of the welfare of the People by securing and protecting effectively as it may, a social order in which justice (social, economic and political) shall guide all institutions of the national life’ and ‘the complete eradication of illiteracy and the assurance to all persons of the right to universal and equal access to education at all levels.’

Delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, Justice Wanasundera stated that the departure from the merit principle, though unfortunate, was inevitable. “The University Grants Commission has tried to act as fairly as possible in this matter and had endeavoured to distribute, on a rational basis, a percentage of seats among the great mass of residents who are handicapped—through no fault of their own—by being denied adequate teachers, laboratories and other facilities in the schools they attend.” The intention of the UGC to implement the relevant directive principles was accepted as a reasonable basis of classification.

The writer submits that the policy of distributing 55 per cent of the places among the various districts on the basis of their population and another five per cent among specified under-privileged districts must be done away with and a more equitable scheme adopted. While filling all places in all streams on the basis of merit is ideal, disparities in opportunities in education need to be recognised. As Laski emphasised in A Grammar of Politics, the provision of adequate opportunity is one of the basic conditions of equality. “The power that ultimately counts in society is the power to utilise knowledge, and disparities of education result, above all, in disparities in the ability to use that power.”

Given the wide disparity in educational facilities even within a given district, it is against the concept of equal protection of the law for students in all schools in a district to be treated equally for the purpose of admission. The large majority of places allocated for a particular district would naturally go to students from the best schools. For example, schools in Puttalam district such as Zahira College and Fathima Muslim Girls School in Puttalam, St, Mary’s College, Chilaw, and Holy Family Girls School and Joseph Vaz College, Wennappuwa, have much better facilities compared to schools, say, in Anamaduwa and students from such schools would grab the majority of places allocated to the district. In the Matale district, most places would go to schools such as Science College, St. Thomas’ and Sanghamitta Balika. In Colombo, there are schools whose facilities are no better than schools in the remote areas of Anamaduwa and Mullaitivu. Students attending such disadvantaged schools are, to use Justice Wanasundera’s words, “handicapped—through no fault of their own—by being denied adequate teachers, laboratories and other facilities in the schools they attend” and should not be treated at par with students of schools having the best facilities.

It is suggested that schools be categorised for the purpose of university admissions in accordance with the availability of qualified teachers and facilities. As far back as the seventies, Prof. Osmund Jayaratne proposed such a scheme in preference to standardisation. Whatever percentage of places that is to be filled outside the merit principle must be allocated among the various categories according to an equitable proportion, after consultation with experts and obtaining the views of the public. Periodic re-assessment of the gradings, as well as an overall assessment of the system of admissions, must be made until someday, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, when it would be equitable to decide on all admissions on the basis of merit alone.