Sunday Times 2
Reforms require urgent implementation to deliver quality education for all in Sri Lanka
“Time is a merciful friend, time is also, a merciless enemy”.
– Mahathma Gandhi
1. Rationale
Thus, the article intends to encourage and stimulate policy and decision makers in the current government to take timely action, so that delivery of quality education for all can make rapid progress during a five-year period mainly through adjustments in the approaches to governance and delivery of services within the existing systems. The challenge for the Government is to ensure implementation of the proposed reforms.
The examination-orientated learning in Sri Lanka's education system needs to change urgently
Increased funding on education, e.g. 6% of GDP, will not necessarily be the only panacea for addressing all ills in education. It is imperative to have an effective, evidence and outcome based (with clear, realistic performance indicators) action plans in the short, medium and long term and to find ways of sustaining that momentum. Extra funding has to be complemented by comprehensive holistic reforms cutting through sector wide in education including in training and skills development.
Learning outcomes should comprise subject specific outcomes, as well as outcomes in transferable skills, which must be made the central goal of education policy to develop the skills needed for the 21st century, such as critical and creative thinking, use of information technology, ability to organise, gather, analyse and synthesise information, draw appropriate conclusions, communicate effectively, have strong numeric and generic skills and a holistic well rounded personal growth to become a good, confident and peace loving citizen of the world. Therefore, rather than simply adding staff and facilities, there is now a need to understand and improve the dynamics of the teaching and learning processes.
Given the peculiar system of governance of education in Sri Lanka where different line ministries are in charge of delivering education and the importance of providing equal opportunities for all children, from early childhood to adulthood, there has to be ensured a better alignment and coordination between policies and implementation of the line ministries. Therefore, a well-established Monitoring and Coordination Unit should ideally be placed within the purview of the Prime Minister or the Minister in Charge of Policy Planning to support such a programme, that will highlight successes, gaps and remedial actions for improvements where needed. Full focus and attention must also be given to the sector-wide approach, strengthening links from early childhood care education that impacts on later development of a child, to basic, preschools, primary, secondary, tertiary – including professional, technical, vocational and higher education, as also, liberal arts education.
2. Overall Methodology for the General System of Education
The Sri Lankan education system must strive to ensure every child receives the right set of educational opportunities at the right time, from cradle to career.
Viz; Pre-School, Primary (Academic School Based Assessment), Lower Secondary (Academic-School-Based Assessments, Vocational – Skills Certificates), Upper Secondary (Academic-GCE “O” Level Certificate, Vocational – (Links to Vocational Schools), Post – Secondary and Tertiary – GCE “A” Level Certificate (Entry to Higher Education Institutes/ Universities), – Vocational – Entry to Vocational Colleges/ Schools (to obtain Skills Diplomas) and finally, to work. Focus should be to improve student learning from Grade I to University. Education and teaching must move from being teacher centric to student centric.
To achieve a high performing education system and to better deliver learning outcomes, access must be ensured and expanded to preschools (Age 4-5), so that all have an equal head start to learning, when they move up to the other phases in education and the system must also develop the flexibility to provide students within the general system of education, with the educational pathways best suited to their individual talents, interests and learning styles. Therefore, lower secondary and upper secondary education must be made compulsory.
It must shift from a purely school based approach, to a learning system that incorporates parents and the broader community, to ensure that every student enjoys the most conducive and effective learning environment possible. The Ministry should develop a comprehensive toolkit that will provide more concrete, specific guidance to develop a stronger working relationship with the parents, the community and the private sector, which could eventually help in improving the quality of the learning outcomes to be achieved.
3. Improvements to the Delivery of Services by the Ministry of Education (Systems Change)
The main mandate of the Ministry of Education (MoE) is to formulate appropriate policies and to monitor its implementation so as to ensure the delivery of quality education for all.
However, although Education is a devolved subject as per the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, the operations and management of 352 National Schools are still being carried out by the Ministry of Education, which involves nearly 90% of the time of its officials, leaving not enough time to carry out its main functions of policy formulation and research, monitoring and evaluations of educational delivery. The Ministry should recognise that these functions are particularly critical to the delivery of educational quality and therefore needs to be focused and improved upon. But, these become secondary in a situation where more time of its officials are spent in administering and monitoring the 352 National Schools, thus hindering interventions in a timely manner in addressing deficiencies under its main functions.
Further, high officials have to spend their time on attending schools functions, distribution of vouchers for schools uniforms, text books, teacher appointments/ transfers and even solving of issues concerning schools admissions. In addition, the concept of the 352 National Schools have created a sense of meaningless elitism, resulting in huge pressures for Grade I admissions to such schools, which is the bane of many a student and parent today. This goes counter to the new policy of the government in making the closest school to be the best school. Therefore, the 352 National Schools should be devolved to the Provincial Administrations, to allow more time for the MoE to properly carry out its main mandate.
A Ministry of Education thus transformed, can then have strong leaders at each level, concentrated on issues appropriate to their main functions of policy development and planning, new processes and structures and thus bringing a culture of high performance. The Provincial and District Administrations can be strengthened to drive day-to-day implementation of schools administration. The ministry organisation can be rationalised with more personnel deployed to the front lines. These measures should yield more consistent and effective policy implementation across all provinces and districts.
The ministry’s focus could therefore be on policy research and formulation, monitoring and evaluations of educational delivery, teacher education and teachers professional development, curriculum development, examinations and assessments, gaps identification and remedial actions, maintaining links with ECCE and preschool systems, as also with the Secondary, Upper Secondary and Higher Education Systems, with a view to enhancing sector-wide interventions.
The ministry officials could thus develop as change leaders, with skills and attributes to support the education sector as managers of educational quality and supporters of schools excellence. They can be given targeted support, training and resources needed to fulfill their new responsibilities, in collaboration with the other stakeholders, provincial and district administrations and institutions charged with respective specialised functions.
Silos between divisions will be broken down and rules and responsibilities streamlined to eliminate duplication of functions and activities, information will be shared amongst concerned stakeholders to allow for evidence based decisions. The system will thus move towards decentralisation with more decision rights on operational aspects being given to the provincial and district administrations. Provincial and district officials will have more say in identifying areas of improvements in their provinces, districts and schools and in tailoring solutions to specific needs.
On the other hand, ministry officials will be asked to stay open to feedback from schools and communities.
They will champion the changes in educational quality and schools excellence. They will need to be highly responsive in providing provincial and district administrations and the schools with support and resources they need, as well as to keep internal and external stakeholders well informed.
A well-established Education Delivery Unit within the Ministry of Education shall maintain and rely on up-to-date data and research to monitor and highlight gaps and take remedial actions in a timely manner to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of education. Analysed data with appropriate and summarised information must be shared at regular intervals with the Monitoring and Coordinating Unit established under the purview of the Prime Minister or the Minister of Policy Planning and Implementation. Monitoring of Capital Expenditures, which often fall short either due to expenditure cuts arising from governments revenue shortfalls, or due to delayed releases of funds from the Treasury arising from cash flow problems, need to be regularly focused upon. It must be remembered that reducing the gap between budget promises and actual expenditures is an important aspect of living upto the larger promise of improved governance made by the “Yahapalanaya”.
The aforementioned reforms within the Ministry of Education are imperative for the effective and efficient delivery of quality education for all in Sri Lanka. The current consensual government is an excellent opportunity to undertake such reforms from within the Ministry of Education itself and to fully devolve the operational functions of all schools to the provincial and district administrations.
4. Actions required to ensure that the goals of education are met
The goal of education has been generally accepted to be the producing of a good citizen with appropriate skills to face up to the challenges in life and the world of work, skills such as problem solving and higher order creative thinking, encouraging the holistic, well-rounded personal growth of the person and to become a confident, peace loving human being, who is able to contribute to his/her own wellbeing and that of the world. These are also deemed a student’s aspirations or soft skills and transferable skills. These aspirations or soft skills need development over a period, from preschool to secondary education and then on in higher education and must be given the importance and focus it deserves, in order to achieve good quality learning outcomes in education for the 21st century.
Whilst an education systems structure would provide for the usual academic, technical and vocational pursuits, beginning with basic literacy and numeracy, the curriculum should also include the achievement of students’ aspirations or soft skills, which the teachers themselves should also develop and acquire for themselves, as their own professional development.
These aspirations or soft skills must become the balance between knowledge and skills, as well as ethics and spirituality, which must become a part of the learning outcomes.
These important learning outcomes are explained below;
Ethics and spirituality
This means that the teachers and students must become ethically and morally upright, spiritually grounded, compassionate and caring, appreciate sustainable development and a healthy lifestyle. There are four types of intelligence that needs to be developed and they can be placed in their orders of importance;
(1) Spiritual, (2) Emotional, (3) Cognitive and (4) Physical
Students should be provided with opportunities to enhance these four capacities of intelligence, where spiritual and emotional intelligence are being placed above cognitive and physical intelligence.
Leadership skills
This must ensure that teachers and students are effective communicators, emotionally intelligent and able to work across cultures; are socially responsible, competitive, resilient, and confident. Intelligence is deemed the ability to apply appropriate skills at the right time for the right purpose. Of the four different skills that embody emotional intelligence, the ability to recognise and control one’s own emotions (recognise and control) are the first two types of skills. The ability to recognise other people’s emotions and to manage them forms the other two types of skills (empathy and soft social skills). Students must be empowered with all of these four skills.
National identity
All teachers and students must be inspired to have pride in Sri Lanka and an understanding of the country in relation to the world. An appreciation of what the country has, sunshine and laughter, culture, history, diversity, its arts, crafts, music, dance and a varying environment in an island nation surrounded by the oceans and with rich vegetation.
Language proficiency
Teachers and students should become proficient in Sinhala, Tamil and English, and be encouraged to learn one additional global language, to be able to better communicate, have a global outlook and to undertake lifelong learning.
Thinking skills
Teachers and students alike must appreciate diverse views, be able to think critically and be innovative, should develop problem-solving initiatives and entrepreneurial mindsets.
Knowledge
Teachers and students must have mastery of own disciplines, be able to harness, connect and apply knowledge learnt, and have an appreciation of Culture, Arts, and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Preschool to Post-Secondary Education
Students should possess a solid moral foundation and the courage to make right decisions and these should be taught from preschool to post-secondary education. Thus, students must be provided with a richer school experience, both academic and non-academic internalising the soft skills and transferrable skills, which are necessary for them to excel in life.
To ensure the assimilation of these skills, there should be more project- and group-based work to develop students’ higher order thinking skills, communication skills, and ability to work, both independently and collectively in teams and to exercise flexibility in decision making. There should be more community-based projects and cross-school activities to understand and work across cultures and foster interactions with individuals from all walks of life. There should be more opportunities for students to learn at their own pace and to pursue their own interests in academic, vocational and technical streams. Teachers must work with students and their parents, to set their own learning targets. Teachers must encourage students to be advocates for themselves so that teachers understand what learning styles work best for each student. This should be the paradigm shift in the teaching and learning processes.
As Albert Einstein once said, “an intuitive mind is a sacred gift and a rational mind is a faithful servant”. What has happened today is that “We have a society that honours the servant but, has forgotten the sacred gift”. Therefore, much has to be done to reverse this trend and to bring the students aspirations and soft skills to the forefront in our education systems. A soft skills or social learning format should be introduced, requiring students to acquire a certain number of credits during their learning life, from Primary to Higher Education, in the soft skills and transferable skills, including those that are deemed their aspirations.
5. Changes to curriculum
The examination-orientated learning in Sri Lanka’s education system needs to change urgently. Examination standards are often out of context. An appropriate grading and reporting system must be adopted without delay, as the current methods do not reflect a meaningful feedback to students. The mental and psychological pressures exerted on children due to the present system must be carefully studied and remedied as a matter of priority. Dependence on extra tuition involving extra spending for parents and study time for students must be reduced or done away with.
Presently, our students are overburdened with subject matter, syllabuses, teaching assignments and exam preparations and they have no time to enjoy their childhood. Curriculum should ensure that student aspirations for their overall self-development are met; curriculum committees should be formed immediately to study the requirements for primary, junior secondary and senior secondary levels, as well as for various subject areas and to reduce the curriculum loads and examination stresses.
The positioning and the objectives of the Scholarship Examination would have to be carefully studied and implemented prior to the next examination. This examination can be dispensed with, when the new policy of the Government to make the closest school to become the best school, becomes a reality.
Science, Technology, English and Mathematics (STEM) are deemed core subjects for a national curriculum framework towards a knowledge economy. More teachers in these subjects must be trained and made available to the villages and peripheral areas to address the situation of a preponderance of students entering the higher education stream in the arts and humanities subjects and ending up without work. Mathematics help improve analytical and intelligent decision making. English provides opportunities to learn from and network with wider communities around the globe and increase employment opportunities.
More investments must be made in ICT in and for education to provide access to advanced knowledge for teachers and learners and expand these facilities to all schools, together with training of teachers and cadre to enhance its use and maintenance.
(The second part of this article will appear next week)