BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

During the presidential election of 2019, many candidates and people publicly talked about education reforms.  Except for Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa, other candidates and the public have not expressed clear views on this subject and are reluctant to talk about what kind of reforms are needed for Sri Lanka. Education is a broader subject area that involves an ocean of topics, views, and ideas. Although education is working as a right of the people political platforms in the presidential election presented the idea that education should be inserted into the constitution as a human right. There is no doubt that education has been working as a right and an essential role in human life since the beginning of the first human to this world. It is quite difficult to identify what are essential reforms to the country as the dynamism and changes in society force it to focus on the requirements of education and training in distinct areas. I have broadly written about this subject area based on my experience in developed and developing countries.  Education is a policy matter as well as practical application and, the ability to successfully implement reforms countrywide would be buttressed the success.

Since the beginning of the education policy of Mr.C.W.W. Kannangara during the era of the State Council, education reforms have been a subject of talking and some attractive policy actions have been successfully implemented in the country while talking was going on among limited interested people, the main reason for current urgency may have been contributed by politics and economic predicaments faced by the majority of the country.  Without understanding the purposes or the way reforms should be implemented in the country, education reforms might not be successfully achieved. On the other hand, educational reforms would not be successful if policymakers don’t clearly understand the quantum and the approach they needed to make as well as the limits in the country to launch reforms successfully. Many people in the country talk about education reforms with individual interest or with self-centred attitudes such as a finding job or gaining the opportunity to go overseas or providing opportunities for their group community.  These are the completely self-centred focus.

Education reforms should be beyond self-centred attitudes and they must be firm actions with a national focus providing broader benefits to different people in the social structure the reforms shall involve capacious objectives consistent with international experience, which align on different focus based on technological innovations and timely human needs.  The other important point is that education reforms are continuing process beyond the election promises.  Election promises are concerned with short-term interest and education reforms go beyond the short-term requirements.

Before initiating education reforms, policymakers, as well as the public who are supposed to gain benefits from reforms need to understand fundamental economic issues and limits of the country. The status of the economy at present indicates that upliftment and the forward movement of the economy would be depended on timely educational reforms. Economic issues in Sri Lanka are associated with macroeconomic factors and the management of public and private enterprises and service firms concern with microeconomic considerations.  Education reforms in Sri Lanka should go along with economic reforms, which essentially need to reform the existing education system.  In addition to economic issues and status, education reforms need to consider other important areas such as value education, which included anti-discrimination and equality of citizens, and elimination of mythical attitudes of people, which are hindrances to development and growth. They are factors involved in the development of the human quality of the country.  Although religions are operating in the country for centuries human quality has not been improved in the process and the result of this situation is less quality and demand for the human capital of the country.  The other vital area is key knowledge and skills development about environment, health and communication in students in all contexts of education.  This is a significant issue that should be specially considered by the reforming policy process.

Essential economic reforms might be a considerable temperament to the public in the short-run and it appeared in Western countries after the cold war, and Western countries and Communist countries understood the essence of reforms and they successfully dealt with human temperaments and implemented reforms tackling many problems such as unemployment, workplace reforms and multi-skills requirement against reforms to maintain the economies pushing to an upward trend. Now the most important economic reforms are policy corrections and deviation policy focus while inventing new policies for the future. 

The people of Sri Lanka have many expectations, which may not be achieved quickly within the expected time framework as Sri Lanka has many limits or impediments to growth. No country can achieve social and economic expectations overnight through a reform process. Positive results from education reforms could be achieved only in the medium term. 

The limits of education reforms are associated with many factors, which are beyond economic considerations and they are involved in social, cultural, legal, religious and international relation-related factors.

Traditional societies in history had no regulations, and impediments were limited, but modern society has many regulations and impediments which are difficult to defeat by an independent country like Sri Lanka. Sometimes Sri Lanka needs to work with other countries.  Economically, countries in the modern world are in a competitive circle and Sri Lanka cannot work alone ignoring the factors limit to growth.

Generally, education reforms are concerned with contextual education, curriculum development and management, education administration, teachers’ and trainers’ development (teacher education and training), policy initiating and review of the current policy framework and remedial management of policy consistent with the dynamism of the world.  These are quite difficult activities that are involved massive costs and quality human services.  Therefore, the capacity of the economy to spend money on these activities is the key point for the success of education reforms. In the meantime, these reforms would generate massive employment and sometimes job losses and diverting jobs from one area to others should be a part of reforms.  Finally, education reforms would be highly advantageous to the country despite the cost involved and the productivity generated from reforms will outweigh any cost.

International structure or acceptance for a million of the population (as a Model), must include one university for higher education and research in a variety of fields, at least two technical colleges for each five hundred thousand population for technical vocational education and training for current staff in workplaces and newcomers, five high schools for secondary context, ten or more schools for primary education context and twenty or more for early childhood contexts, and in addition, there may be several colleges to absorb dropouts in all contexts focusing on a different level of contextual education.  The general structure of education must be organized according to this basic principle and requirements and there may be more educational institutions with private investments with greater supervision and review of the government.  This basic structure is highly expensive and lots of economic, social, cultural and religious issues are involved in the situation and the nature of organizations. When education reforms consider this basic requirement, it is needed to eliminate divisions such as religion, language and any other differences, which might hinder providing equal education opportunities for people.  As Sri Lanka consists of 24 million population the country needs to consider implementing the structure without any difference based on population. It is a horizontal expansion of education, which eliminate current vertical expansion to give priority to urban areas. Horizontal provision of education brings justice and opportunities for the rural community and the current competition for popular schools, colleges and schools will be exterminated by a horizontal model. 

When the population changes the structure would be changed in the future and the general assumption is to implement the structure as government investment, but investments for education and training could be contributed by non-Government and private investors, especially religious organizations could participate with qualitative and strict government supervision. The provision of education should be free, but according to the affordability of parents and it needs to insist on fee-based education provision on individual cases and parents under the new model would be saved a large sum of spending in the current system as private tuition spending and many others will be eliminated by new structural reforms. The structure will give dignity to all students with any differences. In terms of structure, Sri Lanka needs many universities and technical colleges to provide good and quality education and training concerning different fields. The current available infrastructure and facilities would help to successfully build the proposed structure.

The economy of the country should be expanded to absorb more than 85% of graduates and there is no harm in 10% to 15% going overseas in terms of democratic freedom.  Sri Lanka should not be a free education and training place for attracting labour from developed countries.  If the economy of Sri Lanka is prosperous educated citizens and professionals will not migrate overseas to offer hard labour to developed countries. It entirely depends on the preference of the individual and the government has no responsibility for them unless they are subject to discrimination overseas.  This situation can be seen in all developed countries and the government may impose various regulations considering the requirements.  The government is not directly responsible for individual cases; however, the operation of international relations would force the government to intervene case by case.

Within this basic structure, the other essential reform is to change the current attitudes of people toward good schools or bad school feeling and the elimination of such feelings would be depended on the improvement of the quality of education for kids providing equal knowledge and skills from whichever school studied without a difference in rural or urban. This should be a key aspect of education reforms.  The government can promote private investment through incentives for investors and eliminate various expensive competitive exams such as scholarship exams and private tuitions, which will not necessary under the reforms. The new structure allows for each student to attend university or technical education, in other words, every student can gain tertiary education.

Structural reform’s curriculum reforms, which is a broader aspect that eliminates unnecessarily aligning too many students to a certain area of education such as science, commerce, and arts.  Many Western countries allow students to learn arts, science, and commerce together and sometimes to select other pathways in health, engineering, agriculture, services, sports, and many other areas. Curriculum reforms would direct to solve current major problems and needs including value education.  Sri Lanka has many religions but followers are not consistent with the policies of religions. It seems that religion has become a symbol and religion is not working in homes or workplaces or society.  In this situation, curriculum reforms need focusing to offer value education in all educational contexts.  In Western countries, value education is key in practical knowledge and application.  For example, care and compassion are vital values that mean care for self and others.  In any education context, safety is a value, which broadly applies to any subject area and when value education is included, the behavioural pattern of students dramatically changed and the quality of knowledge and skills improve with a higher demand for knowledge and skills. Part two of this article focuses on reforms related to curriculum and teaching.