Editorial
Minister distorts free education
View(s):Education Minister Bandula Gunewardena has issued a new circular defining the conditions for admission of students to Advanced Level classes of national schools. One criterion is that national schools must not take children of international schools for A/Levels even if such students had followed the national curriculum and passed the local Ordinary Level examination.
Minister Gunewardena contends that it is unfair to allow English-educated students of international schools – whom he says are from privileged backgrounds – to occupy national school slots that he feels must rightfully go to underprivileged rural students.
The reference here is to international schools teaching the national curriculum in the English medium and whose students sit local exams. International school students who take foreign exams have even previously been ineligible for admission to national schools.
The crux of the minister’s argument is that, if those who attended international schools stayed where they were, there would be more space in national schools for deserving students of rural State schools. If parents were capable of funding a child’s education right up to O/Levels, they could also afford the remaining two to three years of A/Level classes in the same institution.
It is unclear whether Minister Gunawardena’s new circular was prompted by an empirical study which proved that all students attending international schools were inherently from rich families. That argument is fundamentally flawed. Anecdotal evidence bears out that more and more parents who do not fit the conventional definition of “affluent” are placing their children in international schools for a variety of reasons.
International schools are no longer confined to cities. They have spread across the country, not only creating demand but catering to it. One of the main reasons parents send their children to international schools is their inability to gain admission into “good” government schools.
The State claims to have provided sufficient schools for every child in the country. But the standard of education varies greatly. Moreover, the processes by which children are admitted to the more respected national or government schools are beset with problems including political influence and the soliciting of heavy bribes.
In most cases, moneyed, well-connected parents are anyway better placed to gain admission for their children in reputed State schools. The Education Minister has done little to dispel this disparity; moreover some local schools continue to be vastly better than others.
Another reason parents spend good money — unregulated fees that border on the exploitative is a separate subject — to send their children to international schools is to give them education in English. While the State guarantees free education in either of the two national languages – and in varying degrees of quality – it has been drilled into the Sri Lankan psyche that the English-educated child will get the good jobs. And this isn’t necessarily untrue.
Today, soldiers, farmers, public servants, self-employed families and others in villages have enrolled their children in international schools believing it would give them better opportunities in life. Some of them discover that they cannot pay the rising fees these institutions charge. So they shift their children to whatever government school will take them. Had the minister researched this problem before issuing his circular?
Had the minister considered that even less affluent parents (the ones he ostensibly aspires to serve) cough up thousands of rupees for private classes because the teaching at local schools is wholly inadequate? Some parents spend about the same on tuition as they would on international school fees. But he says private tuition is acceptable. Where does his simplistic privileged-versus-underprivileged argument fit in here?
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Minister Gunewardena went a step further. He said all children must enter government or national schools through grade 1 to be entitled to free school education. It was only if a family could provide a “legitimate” cause, such as having been abroad, that a child would be admitted to a higher grade. But there are multiple other reasons a child might need to enter the State education system midway. And he or she must have that choice.
What the minister appears to be saying – and, with him, one can never be quite certain – is that if children do not gain grade 1 admission to a government or national school, they lose their right to free education. These narrow interpretations threaten to undermine the very basis of free education in Sri Lanka.
When the late C.W.W. Kannangara was asked why free education should be extended to the rich, he replied that he did not want to have class distinctions in education. Every child must enjoy the same rights. Minister Gunewardena is now discriminating against some children on the basis of subjective definitions and categorisations that he has no empirical proof for.
It is not obvious what specific problem the minister is trying to solve. He seems to believe that English-educated students of international schools deprive poorer students of their slots in national schools. He only needs to ask principals how much competition there is for English medium A/Levels in national schools. The answer is “not much”.
Some international schools do not offer A/Levels. Under the new provisions, their students will have nowhere to turn in a clear denial of their right to education. The minister is in danger of exacerbating the O/Level dropout problem Sri Lanka is already grappling with. There are infinite other ways in which he could alleviate disparities and assist underprivileged students.
There are also serious concerns about the implementation of this circular. If it takes immediate effect, what happens to all those children who have entered international schools without knowing that their right to free education would be curtailed somewhere down the line?
A little forethought before the issuance of the circular might have been useful.