{"id":96212,"date":"2019-12-10T00:26:06","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T06:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=96212"},"modified":"2019-12-09T17:21:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T00:21:07","slug":"education-reforms-essential-to-sri-lanka-part-1a-a-horizontal-distribution-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/12\/10\/education-reforms-essential-to-sri-lanka-part-1a-a-horizontal-distribution-model\/","title":{"rendered":"EDUCATION REFORMS ESSENTIAL TO SRI LANKA (PART 1a) A HORIZONTAL DISTRIBUTION MODEL"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

During the presidential election 2019,\nmany candidates and people publicly talked about education reforms.  Except for Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, other\ncandidates and public have not expressed clear views on this subject and\nreluctant to talk about what kind of reforms need to Sri Lanka. Education is a\nbroader subject area that involves in ocean of topics, views, and ideas.\nAlthough education is working as a right of people political platforms in\npresidential election presented an idea that education should be inserted to\nthe constitution as a human right. There is no doubt that education has been\nworking as a right and an essential role in human life since the beginning of\nfirst human to this world. It is quite difficult to identify what are essential\nreforms to the country as the dynamism and changes in society force to focus on\nthe requirements of education and training in distinct areas. I have broadly\nwritten about this subject area based on experience in developed and developing\ncountries.  Education is a policy matter\nas well as practical application and, the ability to successfully implementing\nreforms countrywide would be buttressed the success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the beginning of the education\npolicy of Mr.C.W.W. Kannangara during the era of the State Council, education\nreforms have been a subject of talking and some attractive policy actions have\nbeen successfully implemented in the country while talking was going on among\nlimited interested people, the main reason for current urgency may have been\ncontributed by politics and economic predicaments faced by majority of the\ncountry.  Without understanding the\npurposes or the way reforms should be implemented in the country, education\nreforms might not be successfully achieved. On the other hand, educational\nreforms would not be successful if policymakers don\u2019t clearly understand the\nquantum and the approach they needed to make as well as limits in the country\nto launch reforms successfully. Many people of the country talk on education\nreforms with individual interest or with self-centered attitudes such as a\nfinding job or gaining the opportunity to go overseas or providing\nopportunities for own group of community. \nThese are the completely self-centered focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education reforms should be beyond\nself-centred attitudes and they must be firm actions with a national focus\nproviding broader benefits to different people in the social structure and the\nreforms shall involve in capacious objectives consistent to international\nexperience, which align on different focus based on technological innovations\nand timely human needs.  The other\nimportant point is that education reforms are continuing process beyond the\nelection promises.  Election promises are\nconcerned with short term interest and education reforms go beyond the\nshort-term requirements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before initiating education reforms,\npolicymakers, as well as the public who supposed to gain benefits from reforms\nneed to understand fundamental economic issues and limits of the country. The\nstatus of the economy at present indicates that upliftment and the forward movement\nof economy would be depended on the timely educational reforms. Economic issues\nin Sri Lanka associated with macroeconomic factors and the management of public\nand private enterprises and service firms concern with microeconomic\nconsiderations.  Education reforms in Sri\nLanka should go along with economic reforms, which essentially need to reform\nthe existing education system.  In\naddition to economic issues and status, education reforms need to consider\nother important areas such as value education, which included\nanti-discrimination and equality of citizens, and elimination of mythical\nattitudes of people, which are hindrances to development and growth. They are\nfactors involved in the development of human quality of the country.  Although religions are operating in the\ncountry for centuries human quality has not been improved in the process and\nthe result of this situation is less quality and demand for human capital of\nthe country.  The other vital area is key\nknowledge and skills development in relation to environment, health and\ncommunication in students in all context of education.  This is a significant issue that should be\nespecially considered by the reforming policy process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essential economic reforms might be a\nconsiderable temperament to public in the short-run and it appeared in Western\ncountries after the cold war, and Western countries and Communist countries\nunderstood the essence of reforms and they successfully dealt with human\ntemperaments and implemented reforms tackling with many problems such as\nunemployment, workplace reforms and multi-skills requirement  against reforms to maintain the economies\npushing to an upward trend. Now the most important economic reforms are policy\ncorrections and deviation policy focus while inventing new policies for the\nfuture.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People of Sri Lanka have many\nexpectations, which may not be achieved quickly within the expected time\nframework as Sri Lanka has many limits or impediments to growth. No country can\nachieve social and economic expectations overnight through reform process.\nPositive results from education reforms could be achieved only in medium\nterm.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The limits of education reforms are\nassociated with many factors, which are beyond economic considerations and they\nare involved in social, cultural, legal, religious and international relation\nrelated factors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditional society in history had not\nregulations, and impediments limited, but in modern society have many\nregulations and impediments which are difficult to defeat by an independent\ncountry like Sri Lanka. Sometimes Sri Lanka needs to work with other countries.\n Economically, countries in the modern\nworld are in a competitive circle and Sri Lanka cannot work alone ignoring the\nfactors limit to growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally, education reforms concern\nwith contextual education, curriculum development and management, education\nadministration, teachers’ and trainers\u2019 development (teacher education and\ntraining), policy initiating and review of current policy framework and\nremedial management of policy consistent to dynamism of the world.  These are quite difficult activities that are\ninvolved in massive costs and quality human services.  Therefore, the capacity of the economy\nspending money for these activities is the key point for the success of\neducation reforms. In the meantime, these reforms would generate massive\nemployment and sometimes job losses and diverting jobs one area to others\nshould be a part of reforms.  Finally,\neducation reforms would be highly advantaged to the country despite the cost\ninvolved in and the productivity generate from reforms will outweigh the any\ncost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

International structure or acceptance for\na million of population (as a Model), it must include one university for higher\neducation and research in a variety of fields, at least two technical colleges\nfor each five hundred thousand population for technical vocational education\nand training for current staff in workplaces and newcomers, five high schools\nfor secondary context, ten or more schools for primary education context and\ntwenty or more for early childhood contexts, and in addition, there may be\nseveral colleges to absorb dropouts in all contexts focusing on different level\nof contextual education.  The general\nstructure of education must be organized according to this basic principle and\nrequirements and there may be more educational institutions with private\ninvestments with a greater supervision and review of the government.  This basic structure is highly expensive and\nlots of economic, social, cultural and religious issues involved in the\nsituation and the nature of organizations. When education reforms consider this\nbasic requirement, it is needed to eliminate divisions such as religious,\nlanguage and any other differences, which might hindrance to providing equal\neducation opportunities for people.  As\nSri Lanka consist of 24 million population the country needs to consider to\nimplement the structure without any difference based on population. It is a horizontal\nexpansion of education, which eliminate current vertical expansion to giving\npriority for urban areas. Horizontal provision of education bring justice and\nopportunities for rural community and the current competition for popular\nschools, colleges and schools will be exterminated by a horizontal model.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When population changes the structure\nwould be changed in the future and the general assumption is to implement the\nstructure as a government investment, but investments for education and\ntraining could be contributed by Non- Government and private investors,\nespecially religious organizations could participate with qualitative and\nstrict government supervision. The provision of education should be free, but\naccording to the affordability of parent and it needs to insist fee-based\neducation provision on individual cases and parents under the new model would\nbe saved a large sum of spending in the current system as private tuition\nspending and many others will be eliminated by new structural reforms. The\nstructure will give a dignity to all students with any difference. In terms of\nthe structure, Sri Lanka needs many universities and technical colleges to\nprovide good and quality education and training in relation to different fields.\nThe current available infrastructure and facilities would help to successfully\nbuild the proposed structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economy of the country should be\nexpanded to absorb more than 85% of graduates and there is no harm 10% to 15%\ngoing overseas in terms of democratic freedom. \nSri Lanka should not be a free education and training place for\nattracting labour for developed countries. \nIf the economy of Sri Lanka is prosperous educated citizens and\nprofessionals will not migrate overseas to offer hard labour to developed\ncountries. It entirely depends on the preference of individual and the\ngovernment has no responsibility for them unless they subject to discrimination\nin overseas.  This situation can be seen\nin all developed countries and the government may impose various regulations considering\nthe requirements.  The government is not\ndirectly responsible for individual cases; however, the operation of\ninternational relations would force the government to intervene case by case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within this basic structure, the other\nessential reform is to change current attitudes of people on good schools or\nbad school feeling and the elimination of such feeling would be depended on the\nimprovement of quality of education for kids providing equal knowledge and\nskills from whichever school studied without a difference in rural or urban.\nThis should be a key aspect of education reforms.  The government can promote private investment\nthrough incentives for investors and eliminate various expensive competitive\nexams such as scholarship exams and private tuitions, which will not necessary\nunder the reforms. The new structure allows for each student to attend\nuniversity or technical education, in other words, it is possible every student\nto gain tertiary education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the structural reform\u2019s curriculum\nreforms, which is a broader aspect that eliminates unnecessarily aligning too\nmany students to certain area of education such as science, commerce, and\narts.  Many Western countries allow\nstudents to learn arts, science, and commerce together and some times to select\nother pathways in health, engineering, agriculture, services, sports, and many\nother areas. Curriculum reforms would direct to solve current major problems\nand it needs including value education. \nSri Lanka has many religions but followers are not consistent with the\npolicies of religions. It seems that religion has become a symbol and religion\nis not working in homes or workplaces or society.  In this situation, curriculum reforms need\nfocusing to offer value education in all educational contexts.  In Western countries, value education is key\nin practical knowledge and application. \nFor example, care and compassion are vital values that mean care for\nself and others.  In any education\ncontext, safety is a value, which broadly applies to any subject area and when\nvalue education included, the behavioral pattern of students dramatically\nchanged and the quality of knowledge and skills improve with a higher demand\nfor knowledge and skills. Part two of this article focus on reforms related to\ncurriculum and teaching.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS During the presidential election 2019, many candidates and people publicly talked about education reforms.  Except for Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, other candidates and public have not expressed clear views on this subject and reluctant to talk about what kind of reforms need to Sri Lanka. Education is a broader subject area that involves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}