SL has no plans to tackle large number of students who quality for university admission but can’t find placement
Of the 232,000 students who sat the GCE (AL) Examination in 2010, 142,000 were qualified to be selected to the universities, but due to poor resources available only a mere 22,000 were admitted to the universities, according to official statistics.
EDEX Expo, a creation by the Royal College Union (RCU) since 2004 has been helping these large numbers of students, specially those who were shut out from universities to select their future higher education or advanced training. Those numbers are staggering – in 2010 it was a massive 120,000 who would have been a part of the country’s free education.
A media briefing was held last week in Colombo to announce the holding of a mid-year EDEX Expo on September 14 and 15 at the Royal College Hall. The exhibition was aimed at students who sat the recent GCE (AL) where various national and international educational and training institutions, mostly private sector institutions were exhibiting and demonstrating the educational and training courses available with them.
Dinuk de Silva, Project Chairman, EDEX Mid Year Expo gave the above statistics and said that there is a human resources development gap in Sri Lanka which is a direct result of the country’s educational system, which also indicated the the clear deep deterioration of the country’s free education system.
He identified the country’s educational system as ‘academically biased, pyramid style educational system’. Explaining this phenomenon, Mr. de Silva said, “This means of the 210,000 who left the school after the period of A/L studies, some 90,000 failed the A/L while the balance 120,000 have minimum qualifications for university education but are unable to obtain placement in the state universities. What is the mechanism available to utilize this underdeveloped human resource productivity to the national development”?
He said that a major portion of foreign exchange earnings are remittances from labour employed in foreign countries, but a large majority is unskilled labour. He suggested that if more skilled and professionally qualified could be sent for foreign jobs these foreign exchange earnings could be increased. To obtain such skills and professional qualifications the education gap between secondary and post secondary education and training has to be bridged.
EDEX has been conducting educational exhibitions for the last 10 years, but this was the first mid-year Education Expo and was particularly aimed at those who just completed the GCE (AL).
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