It’s time to talk about teachers 

Just as the pandemic seems to be easing up, with reports from hospitals and medical professionals coming in that wards are slowly but surely clearing up, another problem has reared its head – but this one is almost 100% of the Government’s own making.

Many might not have realised considering the state of affairs in the country, but the ongoing teacher-principal salary anomaly issue has been steadily building over the past month with a string of protests. 

As it stands, nearly 30 teachers’ and principals’ trade unions have withdrawn from all physical and online teaching activities and examination-related duties since 12 July; and despite the Government offering a 9% increase in basic salary, from 17% to 26%, teacher trade unions have warned that if a satisfactory solution isn’t reached then the situation could reach crisis point.

The Government however have done little by way of looking to address the many grievances of these educators – aside from the paltry salary increase offer. And make no mistake, it is paltry; in Sri Lanka, teachers are in the bottom tier in terms of pay among public servants throughout Asia, with monthly salaries ranging between Rs. 30,000-35,000 a month. This, for a group charged with helping nurture an entire generation of citizens capable of navigating a whole new world of challenges post-pandemic.

Indeed, even with the increased workload since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, following a forced wholesale shift to online teaching – one that has left a lot to be desired in terms of the Government’s handling – pay has remained stagnant. But even so, many of these teachers have gone above and beyond the call of duty, some conducting Zoom classes of their own volition – since no training was offered by the Ministry of Education – while others have had to pawn valuables to buy phones capable of video conferencing.

When you juxtapose this hardship with the reality that Government upon Government has gutted the education budget year-on-year – between 2009 and 2018, in only four years were the education budget commitments upheld or exceeded, every other year they fell short – a tragically accurate picture begins to form of the real-world priorities of the politicians we vote for to look after our interests.

The Government for their part has assured that this would be addressed in the upcoming budget, while using the pandemic as an excuse for their inability to pay teachers their true worth. Whether they will live up to this promise remains to be seen, and if they don’t it will be interesting to see the excuses. 

If you look at Sri Lanka’s investment in education as a percentage of GDP, it stands at 1.9%; most middle-income countries average around 4.4% of GDP, while in South Asia it’s around 3.5%. In countries like Finland, it’s as high as 6.4%. But by whichever metric you look at it, the state of education in Sri Lanka does not hold up well.

In the past, many Governments have said they were simply unable to allocate even close to 6% of GDP on education, yet a look at the 2021 budget sees an additional budget allocation of Rs. 20 billion on strengthening ‘national security’ – a sector which already receives close to Rs. 250 billion per year for recurrent spending alone. These priorities simply don’t stack up, and only add to the impression that teachers in Sri Lanka remain grossly underpaid and undervalued. And something that holds equally true is that until the Government acknowledges and rectifies this, we as a nation will not move forward.