Notes for a Manifesto: Education Reforms

If anyone doubts that the entire education system should be reformed, a quick listen to statements made by the Minister of Higher Education Wijedasa Rajapaksha (WR) would force a re-think. On the one hand he extols the virtues of private education and insists that this way lies the future. Then he submits a Cabinet Paper to take over the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT).

The reasons offered are hilarious. WR tells us that SLIIT was initially managed by a private company although owned by the Government (he probably meant ‘state’) with money being released from the Mahapola Trust Fund (MTF) to construct the first building.  Three years ago, WR claims, SLIIT had paid some 400 million rupees to the MTF and purchased a new lease for the property.  

WR is concerned that there are no government officials on the SLIIT board now. He believes that less than half a million rupees is a gross under-valuation considering the worth of SLIIT assets, which by the way were not paid for by the Government. He’s most concerned about the fate of SLIIT students since ‘there is no rightful owner to this institution’!  

That’s WR’s SLIIT story. Another version would give a more comprehensive and detailed picture. It would speak of SLIIT being established in 1999 by a group of eminent academics and professionals as a Company Limited by Guarantee in order to address the demand for IT professionals. It would mention how SLIIT expanded, establishing centers in Matara, Kandy, Jaffna and Kurunegala, while creating opportunities for the study of other fields. 

It is a success story, by and large. If an ‘ownerless’ institution can offer graduate and postgraduate degrees in multiple disciplines, secure accreditation from renowned international certifying authorities in a country where the ‘owned’ universities have little to brag about, it is clear that ownership is not an issue.  PerhapsWR should study how not-for-profit entities operate, assess the track record of SLIIT, compare it with institutions such as the one he wishes to turn SLIIT, and check his tongue before making statements if only to curb contradiction and obtain coherence. 

It’s more than an issue of private versus public (or a mixture). It is about institutional and programmatic coherence and it is also about quality. Let’s consider the current situation.

The state spends billions on education and yet the end product clearly indicates that the return on investment is low.  It appears that the relevant authorities have not updated themselves about the objectives of education, new methodologies and the need for synergy.  

At present the public education system lags behind private systems by as much as two years. It is an exam-oriented system and one which effectively pushes a 15-16 year old into a particular stream. A student that young cannot know what he/she is good at or what would sustain his/her interests. Moreover it makes it impossible for him/her to shift streams in the event it is discovered that he/she chose poorly.  Blinders are imposed early and a student cannot explore other areas of study. For example, the course-rigidity does not allow a mathematics student to learn biology, commerce or literature.  

This needs to be corrected. It cannot be impossible to come up with a system which gives students more flexibility in the combination of subjects, especially at the tertiary level. For example, it should be possible and indeed compulsory for a student focusing on the social sciences to obtain more than rudimentary instruction in commerce, mathematics and biology where the student can select from a basket of subject options.  The entire examination schedule can be restructured to allow for two or more exams that count for the final overall result where a student, if he/she feels that he/she has made a mistake could, after the initial set of exams, shift disciplinary focus.  

While there are assignments, group projects and such, they do not count towards the final grade that a student receives. Therefore, naturally, what is fostered is a culture of exam-mania. It’s a do or die matter and those who die are buried, as per ‘custom’. 

Ideally, there should be a system which strikes a balance between school based assessment and evaluation through competitive exams. Centers could be set up to facilitate schools and teachers to conduct such assessment and also oversee the integration of new and innovative learning/teaching mechanisms.  

In any event, there has to be a strong civil-education component in the school curriculum especially to ensure that students who benefit from subsidies are made aware of how much is spent on them, who coughs up the money and what this entails in terms of ‘giving back’ at some point. 

Such an initiative would have to be complemented by a licensing system for all those who aspire to be teachers. Having a degree does not mean one is automatically suited to teach. It is unfair to subject children to the supervision by those who are engaged in on-the-job training. That’s like getting a medical student to prescribe medicine.

The overall idea is to ensure that when a student exits school, he/she has a more rounded education, is empowered with the ability to work with others, a healthy curiosity, good communication skills in at least two languages (including English) and an innovative frame of mind among other things. 

There are other issues. International schools operate largely without any supervision. In this case it is not about curriculum, but policies and practices, some of which are highly questionable. What is proposed is of course not policing, but a system of licensing that requires adherence to standards across all areas of operation. 

There are lots of institutes devoted to higher studies, both private and public. There are also institutes that focus on technical education. There’s overlap and there’s sidelining. Such things can be corrected by reviewing and if necessary restructuring the institutional arrangement to obtain a greater degree of coherence and enhance synergy.

Education is obviously a key element of national development. Therefore higher education (subsequent to the empowerment through a reformed school education structure) has to be tied to overall skills requirements. This necessitates a comprehensive occupational classification based on current realities and those that envisaged development could produce.  In other words we need to know what kind of human resources we need, envisage the needs down the line and ensure that these ‘needs’ do not compromise the fundamentals of education — a solid enough foundation in the sciences, mathematics, social sciences and humanities regardless of whether or not direct arrows can be drawn from courses to jobs.  

Unfortunately, we are stuck in a mindset that’s best exemplified by the confusion betrayed by the Minister of Higher Education. The preference has been for uttering truisms, misunderstand and misarticulating the problem, addressing piece of it and in an ad hoc manner, and leaving things by and large unchanged. 

We can and must do better.  Please take note Nagananda Kodituwakku, Rohan Pallewatte, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Patali Champika Ranawaka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Maithripala Sirisena and any other individual entertaining hopes of becoming the next President of Sri Lanka.

Other articles in this series:

An introductory note

The State

Justice, Law and Order

Understanding the Executive

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindasenevi@gmail.com

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It’s ‘Community-Education’ and not ‘Free-Education’!

Harin Corea, contemporary at Peradeniya University, has opined that the ‘free’ in ‘free education’ is a misnomer and moreover dangerously misleading in terms of the mindset it creates, nurtures and entrenches.  He elaborates thus:

‘"Free" implies at-no-cost. However, the cost of this education is borne by the community and should probably be called "community-sponsored" education, and in our case, more specifically "tax-payer- sponsored" education. Just changing the terminology, might serve to remind the so-called "champions" of "tax-payer-sponsored" education, that it is neither "free" nor their God (or Marx) - given "heritage" in any form.’

Harin continues: ‘It is the very category they identify as the "enemies" of tax-payer-sponsored" education that is actually paying for it - i.e. the so called "capitalist mudalalis". And what if tax-payers whose children cannot access "tax-payer-sponsored" education, would like to have some other educational institutions where they could individually educate their own children at their cost?’

This is a complex issue, clearly.  In general I am opposed to making education a luxury.  I am also opposed to denying higher education 80% of the students who have qualified for the same, just because the state is lacking in resources.  If the country requires 100 doctors and the state can fund the education of just 20 medical students, for example, and if 80 more have qualified, they should not be forced to wander into some other career if they can afford to pay for their education. 

I am not in agreement with Harin on the issue of ‘taxpayers’ to the extent that there is no one who doesn’t pay taxes.  One doesn’t have to fill relevant forms or have a certain amount of one’s pay cheque held to be counted as someone who pays taxes.  We pay taxes when we buy seeni (sugar) and the-kola (tea leave); corporate entities routinely pass the tax-buck to the consumer, or rather extract it from the consumer plus a little bit more.  Profits don’t fall from the sky. They are in fact nothing more, nothing less than the congealed form of surplus value generated by unequal terms of exchange embedded in given production relations. 

What is important to me in Harin’s conceptualization is the un-free character of education.  He is absolutely correct in that the term ‘free’ has misled generations of students and helped work out all notions of ‘responsibility’ in the mindsets of the beneficiaries.  A lot of things come together to make higher education possible and students are for the most part pretty much unaware of a lot of the relevant factors. 

Way back in 1985, there was a proposal to dismantle the University of Peradeniya and toss its parts all over Kandy, which was to be called ‘Vidyarajapura’ (if I remember right).  The Arts Faculty was to be shifted to Dumbara (because, it was argued, all you need is a black board and some chalk – no white boards back then), the Medical Faculty was to go to the Peradeniya Hospital.  Agriculture was to be shifted to Mahailuppallama.  The prison was to be moved to Peradeniya. It didn’t work out, happily.  I remember, however, Prof. Ashley Halpe observing that opposing Vidyarajapura makes no sense at all if the university community does not recognize the importance of everyone, the non-academic staff, the academic staff, students, senate etc., in making the university what it is.  He might have added (I can’t remember if he did) that the university is also made by all those who in one way or another contribute towards the relevant budgetary allocation. 

The university is not made of students, their grievances and aspirations.  It is made of all these things plus curricula (badly in need of rehabilitation), laboratories, libraries, hostel and recreational facilities, processes of teaching/learning and research (again, badly in need of rehabilitation), limited resources and woefully inadequate human resources.   It is made also of anger, malice, petty in-fighting, caste-consciousness, racism, egos, academic dishonesty, lack of integrity and, as Harin points out, a scandalous reluctance on the part of student activists to recognize that the university does not belong to them but that they belong to the university and this too only for a brief period of time. 

The university belongs to the general public.  It belongs to the man who ‘paid’ taxes when he purchased 100g of tea.  It belongs to everyone who laboured, from Day One to this morning.  ‘Public’ is a better term, but ‘community-owned’ is sweeter and might infuse that little bit of responsibility in those who rant and rave about this thing called ‘free’ education but do not do the one thing that justifies their studentship, i.e. be serious about learning, acquiring knowledge and comprehension.    

When the student sees the Senate Building, or the lecture theatre, or the library or the swimming pool or any other part of the university, when he/she hears a lecturer, uses a computer, sits on a park bench with friend or lover, does he/she see ‘community’? Does he/she see mother, father, grandparent and neighbour?  If they did, then they would hesitate when they vandalize walls.  They would see that they are drawing a sharp instrument across the face of their parents and themselves. 

This is not to say that agitation is out of order. It is not. Young people should stand up and give voice to concern, protest that which they believe should not be allowed to continue without objection. There has to be, however, a sense of proportion, a sense of responsibility.  These facilities are not the best in the world. They are all we have, though.  They are where their children might end up 20-30 years from the moment they break chair, desecrate wall and scream at a lecturer.

Time is long.  At some point we have to look in the mirror at who we are and what we have done.  When we do this, if we see everyone who contributed to that image, then it is a short distance to ‘seeing’ university (for example) and recognizing in its every element, that thing called ‘community’. If we all did this, we would duly abandon the term ‘free education’ and replace it with ‘Community Education’. 

Harin and I might argue about the contours of ‘community’ or the identities of ‘contributors’, but we will agree that it is certainly larger than those who people the university at any given moment in time.  Or the Government of the time.  

This article was first published in the Daily News in June 2010.  Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene.

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