Financial Times - Education reforms in a growing economy

The government has prepared a set of policies and strategies to accelerate economic growth through a series of instruments such as the National Council for Economic Development (NCED) Reports; UN-inspired Millennium development goals, Budget speech of 2006 and Mahinda Chinthana, which are expected to set the pace for a new Sri Lanka.

Though Sri Lanka boasts of a high literacy level of 92% that compares well with developed countries the full potential of this latent strength has not been achieved.

It is pleasing to note that Human Resource development has now been clearly identified as a factor for growth and development through upgrading primary, secondary and tertiary education, enhancing access to education and improving the relevance and quality of education.

The government must also make a concerted effort to eliminate some of the major maladies affecting the school education. The inability to hold GCE O level and A /Level examinations on stipulated dates places a tremendous pressure on the school children, and this pattern is continuing.

Other major issues are the use of school premises for examination/marking centres as well as election centres resulting in a loss of school working days and haphazardness brought into the school calendar. For example the April vacation this year was just over one week and then the vacation is resumed in the months of May and June. Given the multitude of elections in Presidential, Parliamentary, Provincial and local government the Education Department must work closely with their counterparts in the Elections Department to ensure least inconvenience and disturbance to schoolchildren.

Today private tuition has come to stay and it’s no secret in most schools; students sitting for public exams are virtually fully dependent on this system and keep away from school during such exam periods. Cannot the school inspection system look into this malady and take some serious steps to ensure teaching is done properly as stipulated? Invariably the tuition centres (which are visible in all cities) are run by the very same teachers who are on the government pay roll.

Re-introduction of the English medium and inclusion of the Information and Computer Technology (ICT) into the school curriculum are some of the bold laudable steps. Is this adequate to raise the level of competence and quality of education to meet the global needs? Due to globalization markets have no boundaries and opportunities are enormous.

While India is investing heavily on education and reaping good returns Sri Lanka has provided a thriving market for foreign educational service providers and is emerging as a leading importer of education in the region.

The Central Bank annual report states that successive governments have attempted to improve the education system by introducing reforms in general education but these reforms are yet considered inadequate to meet the needs of the economy. The report further adds during the past decade despite significant limitations private sector involvement in education has shown remarkable expansion, filling the gaps in Sri Lanka’s public sector educational system.

With the establishment of the Uva Wellassa University and the University of Visual and Performing Arts, Sri Lanka now boasts of 15 universities. Despite this moderate expansion state sector universities due to resource limitations are yet unable to provide a degree level education to all those who seek such qualifications.

Despite legal permissibility due to political agitations the country has been deprived of private degree awarding institutions thus shutting the door for many deserving cases while the affluent are able to obtain overseas qualifications at a tremendous cost to themselves and the country’s foreign reserves.

It is unimaginable that our students have to go to countries like Nepal and Bangladesh to acquire medical degrees when such degrees could be provided in the home country with least inconvenience.

This unreasonable political agitation against private university education is meaningless as already the Law College, Institute of Chartered Accountants, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology and Institute of Bankers, managed independent of the government are providing higher professional education at a fee.

The biggest casualty seems to be the IT sector whose demand cannot be met by the existing supply sources. Due to this deficiency Sri Lanka is unable to make good use of the thriving export market for software, and the World Bank estimate of reaching the targeted $1 billion in 2012 level in five years time too may not be a reality.

The world is fast moving towards a knowledge economy and our neighbour India has moved ahead rapidly to earn the title of the “World’s back Office” by putting their intellectual capital into good use to boost the emerging Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. BPO is now advancing towards Knowledge Processing Outsourcing (KPO) which focuses on the knowledge of professionals in a third party location in the areas of research, development and innovation.

KPO is a potential high foreign exchange earner involving a lesser number of people. For both KPO and BPO, Information and Computer Technology are critical.

Thoughts for the week
Is Sri Lanka really serious of the impending energy crisis and its consequent impact on the majority of the people? The roads need more and more automated traffic light signal systems to ease traffic congestion. Except the main Baseline road rail crossing, all other crossings in the inner city contribute to traffic congestion. It is also disturbing to hear that the proposed reforms to CEB will get further delayed due to trade union agitation.

Given the present oil price trends, decline seems unlikely and every Sri Lankan must be made aware of their responsibility to eliminate waste fuel and other sources of energy as the subsidy cost too is ultimately borne by the public.