BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

It is required that primary and secondary education in Sri Lanka must be reformed to offer outcome-based education, if there is a problem with lack of resources, cluster schools, 5 to 10 clusters in an electorate should be built to give justice to rural schools and improve the educational quality in regional level. The idea was in education reforms were at the beginning from late 1990s. It was successfully not implemented as the consultants appointed to develop policies were lacking the knowledge of outcome and competency-based education and training. They were trained in the education system that had been effective before 1930s.

Education offering methods for primary and secondary education in all countries in the world has been changed since the 1930s and policymakers agreed with the decision to offer Outcome Based Education, but it was not implemented successfully in Sri Lanka because consultants did not understand the significant of outcomes as well as how to construct outcomes and determine the achievement and certification of the achievement.  

The tertiary education at TVET Technical Vocational Education and Training), and university levels need to offer competency-based training (CBT) and Research-Based Education in universities. How to offer a research-based education in universities, when there are conflicts in universities based on insignificant matters.  Secondary schools need to offer Certificate 1 and 2 on TVET in accession to the general education. Education reforms in a broader way support training students for demanding skills, knowledge, and values. Sri Lanka’s society stuck with an education which is based on theoretical understanding and in the modern society needs skills and values to perform tasks.

Since its political independence in 1948, Sri Lanka began many education reforms, however, the attitude of people has not changed to get away from missionary education and always attempted to maintain the consistency of reforms to the Western system. Under administration of the State Council, Kannangara reforms came in effective despite the reform objectives, rural schools were not funded enough to give justice to rural community and education consultants who educated in Missionary religious Schools attempted to destroy Kannangara reforms as they were focused to upgrade the quality of rural people.

Major reason for unsuccess of reforms has been the consultants and leaders of reforms who had stuck with irrelevant politics in education policy development and many consultants were lack of understanding the required reforms. Buddhist education in rural level has been making justice, however they were not support to offer education in English medium and this weakness created a gap between education in Missionary and Buddhist Education. In history, Sri Lanka had universities based on Buddhist education.

The inequality in fund allocation in the past has mainspring for creating school clusters and operation of clusters need resources such as methods of teaching and training, assessment of students, transporting teachers and students from schools to principal schools of the cluster. Mobile resources such science labs, libraries and computers are essential and it attracts a large sum of funds.

Recently, the president expressed a vital aspect regarding the education management taking an example from American Education, which is not based on competitive exams, but a demonstration of skills and knowledge. Education reforms in Sri Lanka need consistent methods for educating kids, and the school clusters would solve the lack of resources.  

Educating parents on the school clusters needs first, because they are stuck with knowledge-based education, and developing skills and values are vital to become good citizens and go overseas and work. Caste dictions in Sri Lanka have discouraged the achievements of skills in various fields. Skills, knowledge, values and experience in various trade areas would be factors for demanding reasons for people in overseas and educating these facts to parent will be supported to the improvement parent knowledge while effecting education reforms.

School clusters could be improved if the government supports to establish funds and allocate the financial resources to clusters.