Reforming Sri Lankan Education System

Children in Sri Lanka, under the multilingual government education system are required to start school at the age of 5 and are obligated to stay in school until the age of 16. Despite the ravages of a three-decade civil war, Sri Lankan maintains some of the highest literacy rates in South Asia. In addition, it has a comparatively lower GINI index, low infant mortality, and low teenage pregnancy making it a country that ranks well in comparison to other countries of the sub-region in terms of social and economic indicators. In addition, it is the third most sustainable country in the world (behind Cuba and Costa Rica and one of the top ten most giving nations in the world. These indicate that the challenge of future proofing the country’s education system is less of a challenge that it is for a lot of other countries. While the local system has been excellent in some areas, it has proved to be woefully inadequate in others. This is not unique to this country with the education systems of most countries showing similar combinations of excellence and shortfalls. This discussion paper explores some of these issues and provides root level insights that may be eventually utilized to create a strong, sustainable system that ranks among the best in the world.

The key Segway into the discussion: Weapons over skills:

The world is extremely volatile and has remained so for at least the past decade with practicalities and realities changing at such a fast rate that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to predict even the short term outcomes of present day norms and ways of doing things. This situation is best underscored by statistics that indicate that 65% of children in Year 1 today will end up working in a job that does not even exist yet. From an educator’s perspective, this translates into the following: We are supposed to prepare our children for a world, about which we have absolutely no idea! Therefore, the perennial model of imparting “classical skills” such as mathematics, law, engineering, medicine etc. has become dramatically less important, specialization has been completely marginalized by integrated curricula, cross-cutting disciplines and holism and the idea of education for education’s sake, trophy degrees and recognition based on paper qualifications less and less important as the world battles multiple crises that have, in no small part, been actually created by such linear education systems. What has now become increasingly more important is that we prepare our present day children to deal with any eventualities that they may be faced with instead of assuming that specific streams of education will suffice given the fact that most children will end up never using the skills we give them. The problem then reduces not to skill development, which is both limiting and restrictive, but rather to ensure that children are sufficiently weaponized to enable them to rapidly acquire any skill they need as and when such skill becomes mandatory in a rapidly changing world. Measured against that new normal, improving analytical ability becomes more important than learning mathematics or improving language acquisition skills becomes more important than learning English or improving right brain dexterity more important than learning to play the guitar per se.

Mandatory considerations and acknowledgments in any educational reform:

1. Opportunity, capability, potency, dysfunctionality of local educational systems 1. With a large percentage of Sri Lankan citizens falling into the category of rural poor, many parents see education as the only channel through which their children can improve their socioeconomic future and all opportunities that the current system affords such citizens are non-negotiables that must be at least continued and, at best, significantly improved. Example: A single mother from a remote part of Sri Lanka can educate her son on her meager wages from primary school all the way up to his enrollment at a local university

2. Recognize that Sri Lanka’s education system has constantly brought forth excellent professionals in the fields of engineering, medicine, information technology, art, innovation to name a few and that those components of our system that can yield such enabled citizens should be recognized and improved. Example: An OPD Doctor at a Government hospital, expected to engage in consultation of 200 or more patients daily is capable of accurately diagnosing an illness within 2-3 minutes, prescribe appropriate medicine and/or refer the patient to other departments or experts if necessary.

3. Highly competitive educational environs where “education for education” takes precedence over “Education for vocation” has led to the default marginalization of many citizens and the reduction of providing opportunities for gainful contribution to Sri Lankan society on their part creating a largely dysfunctional system that does not cater to the actual needs of the country. Example: Our system of competition is one based literally on cannibalism where one person moves to the next level by literally destroying opportunities for another. In that sense, the focus on allocating a majority of the country’s educational funds to cater to the university students which comprises just a micro percentage of the total learner demographic has seen denigration of life critical vocational capabilities and the exclusion of large swaths of the populace that can be far more enabled if there was a) a recognition of importance of vocation, b) substantial resource allocation for vocational development, c) a more practical orientation to academic exercises and d) a greater flexibility in the types of education mixes and education channels made available to students.

Comparison of local and overseas educational outputs

4. It should be recognized that while qualifications obtained through local educational institutes are comparable or even superior in absolute subject knowledge to overseas systems, local systems are woefully unprepared to impart soft skills to their students resulting in many top positions in the public, private, civil, academic and media sectors going to those with overseas degrees since they are trained in interpersonal communications, showing themselves in the best light, researching their targeted places of employment and projecting a default confidence in their abilities and in their goodness-of-fit for jobs Example: There are two candidates with equal educational qualifications working in the same organization that can be considered for a promotion to a Managerial position. Person X is an output of the National education system in Sri Lanka, while Person Y is from an International education system. Deciding factors for the promotion can be listed out as follows;

-How well can they contribute the company profit gain

-Presentation /communication with confidence

-Rapport, and team leadership – (getting work done by others, rather than being a doer)

-Personality, grooming, commitment and loyalty

Unfortunately Person Y will always get selected over X. What is lacking in the National system that is easily gained in the international system must be researched upon.

5. Local education railroads individuals into highly selective skill areas and thereby reduces the individual’s ability to acquire the type of multifaceted knowledge that is critical towards creating a well-rounded individual capable of optimizing future scenarios based on their ability to manage themselves, human, financial, material, time and process resources critical to dealing with volatile practical situations whereas, in many cases, those with overseas education have at least some idea of all of these areas and are therefore more capable of “adjusting on the fly” to changing realities and emergencies. Example: An individual who has successfully climbed the educational ladder through the National system, at his middle age in life is still struggling with managing his basic financial needs, has little or no idea of how to deal with emergencies and has no clue how to optimize individual and group potency as opposed to individuals who have little formal education but possess the ability to leverage their resources optimally in entrepreneurship, management and implementation realities.

The end of the era of the “Sage on the Stage” With the world shifting rapidly into a more holistic idea of what constitutes civilized behavior, and, by extension, a re-imagined idea of how a more sustainable world population should be educated, learning and sharing have taken precedence over instruction and acquiescence. With educators as confused about the future of the world as their students, this has not only become an organic outcome but also a rational rethinking of how knowledge is acquired and disseminated. Furthermore, the single point focus on a “teacher” has been completely subsumed by the rapid, massive, accurate information banks now available to everyone via the internet. In most cases, students are already extremely well primed in knowledge facets of a given course that hitherto could be only acquired through a teacher. Given this shift, an increasing number of global educators are utilizing emergent techno-tools for providing base knowledge and utilizing classrooms exclusively for summarizing, problem solving, discussion triggering and knowledge link

establishment. These emerging educational methodologies insist that the teacher is in fact a key learner as well as a facilitator and not necessarily a teacher. Therefore, most teachers in the world have now subsumed that natural born tendency towards an egotistic idea of their own importance and engage in a much more inclusive way with their charges. The age of the sage on the stage is essentially over. In the COVID19 era, this message has been increasingly understood not only by teachers but by students as well. In the new normal, it is worth re-imagining our education systems against these realities and adjust our systems accordingly.