Friday, 23 August 2013 00:00
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The draft of the new education policies, which were presented in Parliament, gives some positive insights on steps that may be taken to improve the education system, but does little to offset its biggest issue – political interference.
Among the proposals are recommendations for preschool education to be monitored by a central authority, education to be made compulsory for children from five to 16 years and for children to have the right to learn and practise their religion in school. The syllabi, learning, teaching process, timetables, etc. should be updated every five years in keeping with global trends and the teachers trained, classifying schools in various ways should be stopped, schoolchildren should be banned from using cellular phones, holding private tuition classes during school hours should be prohibited and students should be banned from attending them during school hours. In addition a code of ethics for teachers should be drawn up and established. All sound policies indeed.
A teacher of Royal College stunned many when she chose to protest her transfer by climbing on to the roof of a school building recently. While many, including Education Minister Bandula Gunawardene, condemned the act as “degrading the profession of teaching,” fair-minded people will argue that the protest was a symptom of much larger issues plaguing the education sector.
According to the teacher, her transfer papers had been given because she and two other teachers had given evidence against the school’s Principal. To her mind this was an act of “revenge” for revealing abuses of power. Despite front page coverage of the stunt, it is unclear whether her claims will be looked into and investigated independently.
It is no secret that deep politicisation, cronyism, corruption and mismanagement are just a few of the massive problems that have engulfed schools. Given this tenuous situation, how fair is it to condemn one teacher for taking drastic action? Without an independent services commission to appeal to how can people such as this teacher obtain justice?
Another issue is budgetary constraints. Even though the Government in its 2013 Budget raised funding allocations to the Education Ministry by 6%, this is wholly inadequate given the inflation rate, which is almost touching the double digit level. In fact many research organisations have pointed out that the Government has systematically reduced money for the education and health sectors since 2006, resulting in a serious shortage of resources
Lack of funds was prominently discussed when a schoolgirl was caught for stealing eight coconuts to obtain funds to paint her school. As teacher unions subsequently pointed out, the Government had in recent years delegated maintenance activities to schools, resulting in teachers having to pass on the burden to parents. Even though the furore touched off a media frenzy, motivating the Government to ban fundraising projects, this is an unsustainable move. Even though new proposals say that 5% of GDP should be allocated for education, it is unlikely that such a large allocation of resources will actually take place.
With so many burdens, the Education Ministry, Treasury and other stakeholders need to provide real solutions to the education system that do not shy away from reality.
