Educating teachers

Wednesday, 15 June 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

EDUCATION is the building block of the future. It needs to be supplied with the right resources to evolve with the rest of the world. However, there is a significant gap between the subjects that need to be taught and qualified teachers.

It was recently reported that there are 3,118 excess teachers in the Eastern Province, causing an additional expenditure of Rs. 45.64 million per month.

As a region whose growth has long been undermined by conflict, it is heartening to note that the literacy levels of both the north and east managed to meet up to national standards; in fact the literacy rate in the north has managed to remain above the national average consistently. Therefore there can be little doubt about the level of talent and interest in learning in these two provinces.

However severe lapses in infrastructure have hampered education where children do not have access to competent teachers in all subjects. One example is the Eastern Province where around 2,443 Tamil medium teachers and 675 Sinhala medium teachers were in excess of the approved cadre. Yet ironically the Eastern Province has 1,702 Tamil medium and 321 Sinhala medium teacher vacancies for various subjects.

This lopsided appointment of teachers is a huge problem where a bottleneck is created for the teachers as well as disadvantage to the students. Moves to transfer excess teachers or re-train teachers in subjects that have vacancies have run into controversy with protests and political contention being the result. This clearly shows that the teacher training and appointment mechanisms do not function efficiently.

Many are the discussion forums that have come to the forefront regarding the university system. Yet the problems in Sri Lanka’s education sector run far deeper than that. It is obvious that more widespread reforms need to be made simply to ensure that students learn all the subjects that they are supposed to. It is also important to break the monopoly of Colombo schools that are in high demand and produce employable workers as well as good citizens.

Competent skills are not developed only at university level. The foundation for that is laid within the school years. If teachers are not trained and deployed efficiently it is the students that will suffer. At the moment the entire system is caught in a myriad of problems including excessive politicisation, lack of resources and a complicated transfer system. Re-training teachers is also a huge waste of resources and it would be better for them to gain knowledge to upgrade their skills rather than to shift subjects entirely.

Having competent teachers will also reduce the need for students to depend on tuition. Not only will this give monetary relief to parents; it will also free the students to gain essential soft skills such as IT, public speaking and English knowledge to equip them for life after school. Understanding the demands of the market and providing teachers the right kind of training is an essential component that the education authorities must look into.

When recruiting or transferring teachers the criteria should be based on competence level and the need for a particular category of teachers, rather than just appointing people so that the government can gain popularity with unemployed graduates. This is a question of the nation’s future and as such should not be trifled with.