News
Educators advocate grade 5 scholarship hurdle overhaul
In a fresh bid to circumvent problems arising from the grade 5 scholarship exam, the government has announced that it will not be mandatory and will be up to students and parents to make the choice.
The circular No. ED/01/12/12/10/17-11 dated April 4, 2019 said children of low-income earners will be allowed to sit. And students of families below a prescribed income limit as determined by the government, will be eligible for the grade 5 scholarship bursary.
However, educationists and experts expressed doubts about the move.
They said making the examination optional will not produce the desired results, but would only help create disparities in the classrooms, where students are seen as either rich or poor.
LIRNEasia, senior researcher and educationist, Dr. Sujatha Gamage, said that the government is making a show of taking action to solve a long standing problem that is affecting the very childhood of the future generation. “They wanted to show that they are doing something,” she said.
She said that making the examination optional is not the answer as it will still deprive most students. There are not enough places for students who qualify to enter popular national schools.
She recommends several solutions including re-structuring of exams to identify gifted students, assessing the attainment of essential competencies of all students and identifying schools that fail to equip all their students with essential competencies. These steps, she believes, would make the examination “a smarter one that achieves national objectives without hurting the teaching /learning process, or the development of primary school age children”.
Other proposals include sharpening up paper one to select gifted children so that students of higher cognitive ability get the chance to attend a school of their choice and doing away with paper II that tests subject knowledge as some teachers do not cover the subjects properly.
Also, she recommends that schools work on competencies and efficiencies to get back the schools on track with the others instead of competing with each other to produce good results. An essential competency exam should be held at a provincial level which can be used as a screening test for the scholarship exam.
Meanwhile, University of Peradeniya Prof of Chemistry, Vijay Kumar, suggested upgrading of schools at village level. “The bad school and good school system is not going to work,’’ he said.
“An effective exam should be created giving opportunities for those who qualify in the exams. Also it is important to create vacancies in the popular schools,” he said.
He said the competition to enter popular national schools is intense and grade 6 classes are already full with only a few vacancies available for the qualifying grade 5 scholarship students.
Also, he said that the system of dividing the 10,062 schools in the country to national schools and the rest as provincial, allows room for discrimination with the central government focusing primarily on the 353 national schools.
“Alternatively, the provinces are not able to compete due to lack funds. The system must be abolished and brought under one entity,” he said.
He said the teachers also have the responsibility to teach the syllabi properly and comply with transfers. The rotation of teachers among schools will reduce a shortage in rural schools. “The practice of serving in one school their entire lifetime with support of politicians should not be allowed,” he said.
The Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) said the only solution was to convert all popular schools to secondary schools. “If they are transformed to have classes only from grade 6 there will be more places for grade 5 qualified students,” said the general secretary, Joseph Stalin.
However, senior researcher, Ms Ashani Abayaskera, of the Institute of Policy Studies who has done extensive research on the subject said that the move will give parents the leverage to decide whether they want to send their children to popular schools. “The ultimate decision should lie with the parents,” she said.
However, she said that this was only a short-term solution. In the long run, it is important to improve all schools, so that the clamour among parents for good schools will subside.