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Big purge at Royal amid charges and counter charges over Grade 1 admission
View(s):By Chrishanti Christopher
A major purge of senior masters at Royal College, Colombo has taken place following recent allegations by Education Minister Akila Kariyawasam that Grade One admissions to the country’s leading state school were fraught with irregularities.
As many as eight members of the senior staff, including two Deputy Principals, two senior Games Masters/Assistant Principals, a Section Head and a senior most teacher at the Primary section have either been interdicted or been transferred, the Sunday Times learns.
Most of these teachers were appointed to sit on the admissions panels or assist in finalising the 2017 Grade 1 entrants. They were reportedly held accountable for being unable to detect the fraudulent documents (i.e. registered deeds, extracts from the Land Registry, lease agreements drawn up by lawyers and voters lists certified by the Elections Commissioner) submitted by some applicants. Other reasons given for the transfers or removal from important posts were that these teachers exceeded ten years of service, obstructing school administration among other charges.
The move follows earlier allegations by Minister Kariyawasam that irregularities in Grade One admissions to Royal College had taken place and that the old boys union of the school, the Royal College Union (RCU), cannot deny its involvement as initial investigations have shown that thirty one (31) applicants had produced fraudulent documents at the interviews, a charge the RCU dismissed as being “baseless and unsubstantiated”.
Minister Kariyawasam told the Sunday Times this week that twenty (20) national schools were under investigation by his ministry for irregular admissions for Grade One in 2017, and that old boys and past pupils associations were found to be involved in these irregularities. “Applicants had submitted false addresses and documents and there were two RCU members sitting on the interview panel”, he said.
He also said that members of the old boys unions and past pupils associations were only allowed to sit for five years in the interview panels, but there were those who were sitting for ten years or more. “It has become a mafia”, he said and added that it has “become a lucrative business for them”.
RCU Secretary Athula Munasinghe hit back saying the allegations against the union’s representatives on the interview panel were unfounded and only come via the media. He said the union was 125 years old and has 14,000 members working with the authorities for the betterment of the College.
Last week, the RCU took out a half page advertisement in the newspapers challenging the Education Minister to hold an impartial inquiry to the allegations he has made against the union, and assuring its cooperation in such an inquiry. It accused “interested parties with hidden agendas” of tarnishing the name of the College and the union with “innuendos, half-truths and veiled threats”.
RCU office-bearers told the Sunday Times last night that this purge of senior teachers “raises concerns as to the real reason for the unplanned terminations, as they have played a major role in managing this institution and in supervising the outstanding success of Royal students in the last many years in studies, sports, community projects and other extra-curricular activities”.
“It’s a remarkable coincidence that a varied number of reasons all happened in a very short period of time enabling the Ministry of Education act in this manner to expose the children of Royal. The real and eminent danger to Royal College now is that all these vacancies will be filled by powerful people in the ministry with obvious animosity and malice towards Royal, sending unsuitable people to the school for their own purposes and agendas,” one union official said.
Principal of Royal College B.A. Abeyratne told the Sunday Times last night that he needed time to explain the movements of his senior staff, and cannot do it at short notice.