Education and the economy

Teacher X gives some work to his maths class in a respected government school in Colombo –first thing in the morning then scoots off for private tuition and returns at closing time to mark the attendance register. Little wonder then that the number of failures at the GCE /OL has risen to unbelievable levels, triggering a major outcry this week.

Earlier this week, the Examinations Department said 51 percent of 525,000 candidates who sat the O/L exam had failed with just over 48 percent passing, a shocking drop from an average 60-70 percent pass rate every year. Even more startling was that all students from nine schools in Colombo, where the best education facilities are available, who sat the university entrance exam this year – the GCE Advanced Level – had failed in all the subjects.

Now what does it mean to business and the economy? More failures from the school system demanding upscale jobs or white collar ones and creating more disparities in the marketplace where jobs in agriculture, farms and plantations are going a-begging. The story of the GCE O/L and A/L crisis is not new with many experts in the past expressing concern over the growing deterioration of education standards in a country considered once to have the best education and health indicators in Asia.

“We boast of high literacy rates but our higher education is the most backward in South Asian. In the region including Bangladesh, most schools and universities are teaching market-oriented subjects and skills, unlike here,” according to Kabir Hashim, an UNP parliamentarian who once served as Minister of Higher Education. He believes politicisation and inability to sustain national policies in education has led to the rot. “Earlier it was rural schools that suffered from lack of facilities and good teachers.

Now even the schools in Colombo are suffering due to lack of proper systems, politicisation and deteriorating standards, and also lack of motivation and competition for teachers,” he added. Prof. Siripala Hettige, Head of the Sociology Department of the Colombo University, attributes the crisis to lack of quality education and more emphasis on quantity and the need to pass students at whatever cost. Dr Nimal Sanderatne, one of the country’s most eminent economists, says: “Nowadays students are automatically promoted without proper assessments. All the failures are going up unlike during our days when if you are not up to standard, you don’t get promoted to the next grade.”

While infrastructure, poor teaching methods, constant changes in education policy when governments change and poor teaching training practices have been blamed for the current state of affairs, the proliferation of tuition classes across the country has worsened the rot in education. The new assessment system where teachers have to burn the midnight oil and prepare these reports has also been blamed for deteriorating teaching levels.

On the other hand most of the best teachers pay more attention to teaching at private tutories on lucrative terms and very often teach the same students in the school they are attached to. The bulk of students sitting the GCE O/L and GCE A/L exams follow private tuition because without that it is almost impossible to pass. According to some reports, owners of private tutories are among the richest in Sri Lanka.

One of the biggest problems in the education system is the mismatch between ill-equipped graduates passing out of local state universities and the needs of the market place. The unemployment rate in Sri Lanka is also high not because there aren’t jobs but simply because the graduates are unemployable. According to Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) of Sri Lanka President Nawaz Rajabdeen, thousands of vacancies in the private sector advertised in the local media remain unfilled as the applicants lack competencies and skills.

“We produce graduates from state universities mostly in the Arts Stream because they are forced to opt for this study as there are not many teachers in the science stream in schools,” says Dr Sanderatne. Another development is that some 50 percent of the graduates passing out in Sri Lanka are from the private education sector which could create social inequities.

Local universities rarely complete a semester without classes being disrupted due to protests or other action by student unions. Often students do many part time jobs knowing that their university education period is going to stretch beyond the 4-5 years resulting in frustration and no proper study. Education is indeed in a mess and needs to be put right but who will bell the cat?