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Sports compulsory in new draft education policy
The National Institute of Education (NIE) is due to present a new Draft Policy for Secondary Education Reforms — with 50 percent of the curriculum dedicated to core subjects like math and languages and 10-15 percent to physical education, health and sports.
The draft policy is to be presented to the NIE Council and its Academic Affairs Board on Thursday before it goes to the Cabinet.
The policy envisages a specified number of sports being compulsory for every child. The Education Reforms State Ministry will also enter sports as a criterion for the Advanced Level certificate. The remaining percentage will be optional subjects, available from Grade 6 upwards. The NIE believes the policy will help a child choose a suitable career path from a young age.
The idea is to keep diversifying until a student has around 1,000 optional courses to choose from, according to Ministry Secretary Upali Sedara, who, however, said it would not happen overnight.
Meanwhile, ‘General Information Technology’ (GIT) will be mandatory at O/Level stage and optional at A/Level stage.
The NIE can implement the policy once it receives Council approval but the Education Task Force will first present it to Education Minister G.L. Peiris and State Minister Susil Premajayantha on Thursday.
There will be four pillars aimed at moving away from just classroom learning: cognitive skills, health and happy family skills, emotional and moral skills, and technology and media skills.
In the old system, IQ was deemed most important. “But recent research shows that IQ accounts for just 30 percent of a person’s chance at success,” Dr Sedara said. The rest is emotional maturity and intelligence.
“So, we are trying to ensure our education system teaches children how to manage and develop their emotions right,” he explained. “An education system that cultivates empathy along with cultural considerations is vital.”
He said this would be a move away from the stereotyped “one size fits all” education. “Some 350,000 students enter the system and leave with the same input, without consideration to individual capabilities and interests,” Dr Sedara said.
He said the policymakers had collaborated with the Examinations Department to reconstruct school-based assessment systems and to introduce reliability, validity and credibility. The Department would set up procedures to ensure students were not assessed by the class teacher alone but by panels that would include third parties.
The secretary said there would be semester and credit-hour systems from Grade 6 to give flexibility to students. The curriculum would adopt self-learning principles.
“The purpose of education is to cause lasting behavioral changes; so this paper-and-pencil style of teaching must go,” Dr Sedara said. “Learner-centric education systems will come in.”
He said the policy was, however, still only a proposal. Whether or not it gets implemented depends on the Cabinet and those in power. Some critics questioned if the Ministry was “reinventing the wheel” when there is a policy framework called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) 2030 Agenda drafted by the Sectoral Oversight Committee on Education and Human Resource Development.
That process began with the presentation of a paper on the requirement for STEM in education by Mr. Susil Premajayantha, who was then Minister of Science and Technology, said Piyal Ariyananda, Oversight Committee Consultant. But the idea originated in the Coordinating Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation (COSTI).
The Committee took over from the Education Ministry to develop the policy. The then minister Ashu Marasinghe, as Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Higher Education, presented it to Cabinet in January this year. It gained the backing of Dulles Alahapperuma, then Education Minister.
But Dr Sedara said the STEM 2030 Agenda was “too narrow” as its focus was on four subjects. He said he feared it would worsen the “brain drain”.
The “misconception” of STEM being narrow was common, said Sachie Panawala, COSTI Project Scientist. It did not envisage a system focused on four subjects. It showed how STEM techniques could be used to give students a holistic educational experience. Its primary focus was to teach students how to come to conclusions rather than feed them the conclusions, he said.
STEM was a method, not the content. “You can, in fact, teach even Buddhism through STEM,” Dr Panawala said. “It promotes critical thinking and creative problem-solving.” The Committee recognised that 70 percent of future jobs would be STEM-centered.
The STEM 2030 Agenda and the Government’s new Draft Policy for Secondary Education Reforms, it was observed, were largely similar. They only used different terminologies. Both move away from exam-centric teacher to student-centric learning. And they call for the development of cognitive abilities while fostering each student’s individual creativity.
The STEM Agenda 2030 was to have kicked off this year but has not received Cabinet approval. Meanwhile, yet another new policy is being floated.
Curriculum cycles last eight years, Dr Sedara said. The next renewal is due in 2023. If passed, the new curriculum would be introduced for Grade 6 and 10.