Problems in local school exams matter for concern, says former education minister
An economist and former a Minister of Education and Vice-Chancellor, remarked that during his time he has not heard of anyone petitioning the Human Rights Commission to make complaints on question papers.
Dr. Karunasena Kodithuwakku, a former Vice Chancellor, Sri Jayawardenapura University and Minister of Education indicated that he never tried to contact or instruct the officials who were setting questions to GCE AL subjects and to his knowledge nobody has meddled in the work of the academics in setting up of question papers.
He was speaking at the launch of the book “Policy Issues of Sustained Development of Sri Lanka” by Prof. A.D.V. de S Indraratna and the latter being felicitated as President, Sri Lanka Economic Association (SLEA) for 10 years, held at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, last week with Basil Rajapakse, Minister of Economic Development, as Chief Guest.
Dr. Kodithuwakku said that Prof. Indraratna is a first generation economist who graduated from the Colombo University in 1951 when economics was first taught in Sinhala. His book “Milaniyaya” – The Price Theory – in Sinhala has been a great help to economics students when there were only a few Sinhala books in economics and even English Books were scarce to find.
He said that Prof. Indraratna understood the country’s socio-economic issues and those who associate with Prof. Indraratna and those who read his numerous publications and listen to his addreses are all bound to conclude that he is an outstanding teacher of economics.
Dr. Saman Kelegama, Executive Director, Institute of Policy Studies speaking on Prof. Indraratna’s book said that he recalled in 2003 when the latter became the President of the SLEA he introduced two new items to the agenda of the association. One was to institutionalise the annual sessions with a presidential address and the second was to bring out a volume based on the cases presented in the annual sessions.
This volume covered many subject areas such as human resource development, poverty elevation and income distribution, regional trading arrangements and free trade agreements, private public partnership, inflation and growth, debt management, export promotion.
Dr. Kelegama said that the theme of the book is that in Sri Lanka economic policies are very important to generate sustainable economic growth and development and growth and development can be achieved by various interventions in the economy but in the short term it may not be sustainable.
The main theme of the book, he said is that for sustainable growth policies should be different and whatever growth going against the economic fundamentals or creating an imbalance in the macro economy would not be sustainable in the long term creating inflation, more debt, etc.
He said that all these essays have been written in the context of not traditional economic analysis but in the context of how these issues are linked to sustainable growth and development. This is a unique feature. Highlighted are some of the issues that are emerging in the Sri Lankan economy such as the growing debt, where Prof. Indraratna argues that it may be time that the Sri Lankan economy do a transition from a debt led, debt finance growth to an export-led and foreign direct investment-led economic growth strategy.
It is, he said according to the book more sustainable in the long run to generate high growth and elaborated the type of policy environment that needs to be created to generate more exports and how to address more foreign direct investment. Sri Lanka should attract at least more than 2 per cent GDP foreign direct investment to maintain a high level of growth, the book says, he pointed out.
His analysis, Dr Kelegama said on sustainable growth is not only for the macroeconomic perspective but also is on poverty and income distribution. He looks at the whole issue of sustainability in two areas and argues that if growth is jobless it creates more poverty.
With regard to the human resources development chapter, Dr Kelegama said that the book argues that the development of human resources is a vital component of achieving sustainable growth. It points out that low labour cost is disadvantageous to the economy as the country is moving towards a high skilled economy and the objective is to go forward for a knowledge based economy. The book shows human resources can be equally important for generating a sustainable growth, he said.
The inflation situation in the country is analysed and the book explains about inflation in the close economy period and inflation during the open economy period and looks at the inflation growth nexus and the importance of managing inflation for sustainable economic growth, Dr Kelegama indicated.
On missed opportunities the book indicates that in 1950 after the Korean war there was a commodity price boom but Sri Lanka used that benefit for consumption and maintaining the welfare state and not on infrastructure development or economic diversification as done by other East Asian countries.
On how prioritisation went wrong is elaborated in the book explaining that the expenditure allocation on education was limited to only primary and secondary education and not on tertiary education. Countries behind Sri Lanka, like India and Malaysia have overtaken Sri Lanka in tertiary education, the book says.