Sunday Times 2
Education reform must be democratic, transparent, people-led and inclusive of women and feminist voices
View(s):By Janakie Seneviratne
Education in Sri Lanka is not a commodity to be governed by market efficiency; it is a hard-won public good, a democratic right, and a cornerstone of social reproduction.
The country’s free education system emerged from anti-colonial struggle and popular mobilisation, reflecting a collective commitment to social mobility, regional equity, and citizenship.
From a feminist political economy perspective, education sustains not only skills and productivity but also care work, democratic participation, and social solidarity. Women—particularly teachers, education workers, caregivers, and students—constitute the backbone of this system, especially in rural, estate, and the former conflict-affected northern and eastern areas.
When Sri Lanka’s education reforms are shaped by elite, technocratic, and market-driven agendas, women’s labour, knowledge, and lived realities are routinely sidelined. This exclusion produces policies that entrench gender, class, and regional inequalities, while severing education from its historic social purpose. In a country marked by uneven development, ethnic marginalisation, and the enduring legacies of war and economic crisis, such reform trajectories are not only flawed but also deeply dangerous.
For this reason, the establishment of a People’s Commission for Education Reforms is urgently necessary. In Sri Lanka, democratic governance cannot be reduced to procedural consultation after decisions are made; it must be a substantive process rooted in popular sovereignty. A genuinely people-led commission must include women educators, feminist scholars, trade unionists, students, and community organisers—particularly from marginalised communities such as estate workers, rural women, Muslim and Tamil women, and those from the North and East. Without feminist participation, reform processes risk reproducing entrenched patriarchal and ethnocentric power structures that have historically shaped policy-making in Sri Lanka.
The NPP government’s haste in advancing education reforms under pressure from external actors such as the ADB is deeply troubling.
Sri Lanka’s experience with donor-driven structural adjustment demonstrates how conditionalities erode democratic decision-making and impose market logics on public services. In education, this takes the form of creeping privatisation, performance metrics, and cost-efficiency frameworks that undermine teachers’ autonomy and shift care and educational burdens onto households—disproportionately borne by women. Such reforms contradict Sri Lanka’s constitutional commitment to free public education and risk exacerbating class, gender, and regional inequalities.
The leadership of a People’s Commission must therefore rest with individuals who possess intellectual independence, feminist political commitments, and broad public credibility. The proposal to appoint Professor Arjuna Parakrama as Chairperson and Niyanthani Kadirgamar as Secretary reflects the necessity of protecting the reform process from political interference, privatisation agendas, and technocratic capture. Equally essential is the meaningful inclusion of feminist women within the education sector at all levels of decision-making—not as token representatives, but as agenda-setters, theorists, and producers of policy-relevant knowledge grounded in Sri Lanka’s social realities.
Proceeding with education reforms in Sri Lanka without democratic consultation—particularly without the leadership of women and feminist actors—will deepen social inequality, weaken the free public education system, and normalise exclusionary policy-making practices. From a feminist economic perspective, these are not neutral or technical policy decisions; they are structural acts of dispossession that disproportionately harm women and marginalised communities.
All ongoing education reforms must therefore be halted immediately. This pause is essential to prevent irreversible harm and to enable a participatory, transparent, feminist, and people-led reform process grounded in equity, care, democratic accountability, and the public interest.
(The writer is a gender and development consultant with
a master’s degree in economics.)