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Problems with Sri Lanka’s education system

EVERY government in Sri Lanka since Independence has been criticised for ruining education.

With every change of government, there comes a change in education policy complete with changes in school syllabi and teaching methods.

Changes are necessary in education systems in keeping with the demands of the job market, argue advocates of the change. But others say changes create confusion while teachers and parents take several years to come to terms with them. When the system at last begins to work somewhat smoothly, the government feels it is time for reforms again.

Sri Lanka may be economically sliding towards a basket case and politically a murky mess where politicians put self before the country and its people. But on the social index, it has made tremendous advances, especially in literacy, which stands at 90 per cent. The statesman behind the achievement of near universal literacy level was CWW Kannangara. In 1945, that is, three years before Sri Lanka was granted Independence, he successfully presented a case for free education.

Kannangara, fondly remembered as father of Sri Lanka’s free education, argued that education should be recognised as a basic right of every child and cleared the path to make education the heritage of the poor.

It is largely because of Kannangara’s free education policy, I am what I am today, as far as my education — also my career — is concerned. Sri Lanka is one of the few developing countries where education is free from grade one to university.

Education has become a hot topic in Sri Lankan politics today in the wake of a controversial Supreme Court ruling on a fundamental rights petition challenging the government policy on admission for grade one in schools.

In some quarters, the ruling which spelt out a set of guidelines for school admission was seen as judicial activism. But others protested, saying the judiciary should not interfere in what is exclusively a matter for the executive and the legislative branches of the government. Supporters of the judgment argued that if the government is not administering, somebody has to.

The opposition was furious: Not only because the Supreme Court is seen to be violating the time-honoured democratic tradition of separation of powers, but also because the content of the ruling is preposterous, to say the least.

The Supreme Court ruling, inter alia, called for aptitude tests for five-year-old children seeking grade one admission and marks to be allocated on the basis of the education qualification of their parents.

Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, a one-time education minister, said the Supreme Court guidelines would deny education to the poor while it would contribute to elitism.

The guidelines close the doors of popular schools to children of parents with poor education background. A child of a carpenter with Grade Ten education will only have a slim chance of getting admission to a popular school while a child of a degree holding professional is assured of a place.

In a materialistically-driven and highly stratified social system, education is, erroneously, seen as a means to equality. A classic example is Abul Kalam, a poor boatman’s son who became the president of India after he shot to fame as a missile scientist.

But education, in effect, has not contributed to equality, with the poor and the downtrodden becoming enmasse rich and powerful. On the contrary, it thrives on inequality.

Our constitution says no person shall, on the grounds of race, religion, language, caste, sex or any one of such grounds, be subject to any disability, liability, restrictions or condition with regard to access to shops, public restaurants, hotels, places of public entertainment and places of public worship of his own religion.

But the framers of the constitution conveniently left out access to schools. In Sri Lanka, we have public schools with racial and religious tags. Discrimination is practised in school admission. My father sought admission for me in a Buddhist school in my neighbourhood. The teachers who interviewed me politely told my father that he should try a Muslim school for me. I finally ended up in a government school with a Christian name. Many schools implement a quota system based on religion: 90 per cent of the places would go to children of a particular religion while ten per cent is allocated for others. The exclusivity is maintained with religious zeal, so much so that a Catholic child would not get admission in a non-Catholic Christian school and vise versa.

Besides, in elite schools, some of which are run with public funds, it is difficult for a child of a poor family to get admission, because past pupils jealously guard the school’s elite status. In private sector recruitment, a job seeker who studied in an elite school is preferred to a more qualified person from an ordinary school.

Michael Rutter, world renowned British academic and father of child psychology, carried out an extensive research for five years in the 1970s on educational development. The research of this Lebanese born academic helps us understand why schools tend to maintain inequalities.

His research points to a self-repeating cycle in which students from relatively privileged homes attend a particular school and perpetuate its qualities: good teachers are attracted, and motivation is maintained. A school mainly attended by deprived children will have to work far harder to achieve a similar result.

Ameen Izzadeen is a Sri Lankan journalist based in Colombo

• OPINION