Sri Lanka fails O/L test

By Ruwanthie de Chickera

On 23 May 2022, over half a million 16-year-old Sri Lankan children began their O/L examination. The entire country stands behind these children. Citizens are mobilising themselves to provide them transport to exams, hotels are offering up their premises so students can continue their studies without power cuts and the people’s movement is scaling back on protests just to ensure that no exam going child is inconvenienced.

We adults remember the O/L examination as the most difficult exam of our lives, and we feel for these children who are being forced to sit for these papers in near catastrophic circumstances.

This O/L batch was just 14 years old and in grade 10 when the pandemic hit us, they had barely begun their first year of the exam syllabus. Their entire two years of the O/Ls has been plagued with unprecedented challenges. Closure of schools, worsening situations at home, mental and psychological breakdown, fuel shortages, transport crises, power cuts, economic desperation and political instability. Complete and utter chaos in the country. We have a simple question to the Government of Sri Lanka. What have you done to support the children during the catastrophic events this country has faced since 2020?

This is a legitimate question because the basic responsibility of any Government is to provide protection and guidance to its citizens at all times. This is their job this is what we pay them to do and state and Government officials in charge of education are directly responsible for the children of this country.

Sri Lankan schools remain shut for the longest duration in the world during the pandemic. More than 60% of our 4.3 million school-going children had no access to online education at all during this time. In spite of this the Sri Lankan Government did nothing to ease the exam stress on children.

It continued to conduct full public exams in spite of children not having access to schools.

To understand the current situation a further examination of the details is required. COVID-19 hit Sri Lanka in March of 2020. On 12 March, there was an abrupt announcement that schools will close indefinitely. Schools then stayed close for sixteen and a half weeks and they opened on 6 July, only for grades 5, 11 and 13. They stayed open for five days and then they closed for another four weeks.

This current O/L batch, which is just sitting their exams, started off by missing 21 weeks of school right at the beginning of their grade 10. Then on 10 August schools open but only for grades 11 and 13. A few weeks later all the grades above grade 4 were back in school but most children were permitted to come to school only one day of the week. Schools stayed open like this for 25 days and then closed again.

The Sri Lankan Government like all other governments was struggling with an unprecedented crisis so let’s give them some time to get their heads around this problem. By September 2020, the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Sri Lanka had actually come up with a reduced syllabus of essential learning outcomes and this was given to every grade up to the O/Ls. Schools were instructed to adhere to this reduced syllabus, the O/L students would be tested on this rather than the entire vast exam syllabus.

In October 2020, after being open for 25 days schools close again so the Government can conduct the 2020 A/L examination and the year 5 scholarship examination. These exams are held during an island-wide COVID curfew. Children had to travel to their exam halls amidst great hardship.

Schools that closed in October 2020 stayed closed till February 2021, a total of 19 weeks, and when they opened, they did so for guess what? Practice tests for the O/L batch above this one.

The single priority of the Sri Lankan Government emerging in all of this is clearly visible. Schools remain shut, the country is in lockdown, most children have no access to online education, but exams must continue.

Further analysing our crazy school schedule or should I say exam schedule, because we didn’t have school, but we still have exams to write. In 2021 schools that opened on 11 February stayed open for 12 days for practice exams. Then on 1 March, they closed for 10 days so that the batch above this O/L batch can have their O/L examination.

Almost one year into the pandemic, let’s pause a bit and work out the average number of school days in a year. A local school is open for about 195 days of the year, in 2020 schools will be open a maximum of 55 days, this means ‘partially open’. The year 11s who were forced to sit their first public exam actually had only one-fourth the amount of school days before they were sent up for their exams.

Remember the NIE circular in September 2020 informing schools of a reduced syllabus, in January 2021, six weeks before the O/L exams, the Ministry of Education announces that this reduced syllabus circulated by the NIE is invalid and that children in fact will be tested on the entire exam syllabus. The exam was not easy, and the children failed.

This is a good place to question the very need for the O/L exam. The A/Ls examination one could argue gives students the grading they require to enter university. What does the O/L exam really do?

Without it based on school assessments, children can still transition into the A/Ls and many countries took such mature decisions on behalf of their students. During COVID-19, on 15 March 2021, schools opened only for grades 5, 11 and 13, notably exam batches again. Our current overall batch has just entered grade 11 after having missed 40 weeks of school in grade 10. Schools managed to stay open for 19 days, before they closed for one week for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

After this short holiday, they reopened for all students but at 50% attendance, you take two weeks to cover the work you would normally cover in one week. School stayed open at 50% capacity for 21 days and then on 27 May they closed again.

This time they stayed close for 23 weeks, this is approximately 115 school days. A rough calculation of our current O/L batch. They have been out of school for 63 weeks since March 2020. At best they have had about 40 days of school since the beginning of their two-year old syllabus.

After 23 weeks of school closure that stretched from May to November in 2021. On 1 November, schools finally opened but once again at 50% capacity. 29 school days later they closed on 23 December and now we have made it to 2022.

COVID seems behind us but not our troubles. Already since November 2021 there have been strange events like the sudden power cuts and water shortages which the Government blamed on problems in the Norochcholai Power Plant. As 2021 rolls into 2022 and January rolls into February, the President and the Government continue to mislead the public on the impending power, dollar and fuel crisis.

By 18 February, the Government could no longer hold back the inevitable through their untruths and scheduled power cuts began to be inflicted on the public. Between February and March 2022 daily power cuts increased incrementally from two hours to four hours to five to seven and a half to 10 and then finally 13 hours, amidst these power cuts fuel and gas shortages amidst the dollar crisis and the rising costs of living. Families began to fall apart, children came hungry to school and some children cannot even make it to school at all. Never in this first quarter of 2022 did the Government ever prioritise the physical or psychological needs of the many children fallen victim to this widespread breakdown. In spite of overwhelming evidence of families plummeting into hunger and desperation. Our political leaders continue to spend money on themselves and continue to rob the country of its reserves and pull us into bankruptcy.

However, in spite of power, food and fuel shortages during the first quarter of 2022, schools stayed open for almost an entire term but then on 1 April, riots and curfew caused schools to close again. On 4 April, schools reopened and 6 April full crisis schools closed.

The Ministry of Education, maybe we should just call them the Ministry of Exams, do the only thing they seem to know to do when they keep exams going in March and April but these two are cut short by unrest in the country and schools close early for ‘Avurudu’ before reopening on 18 April. On 9 May, the Government instigated attacks on peaceful protesters and schools were further closed for another whole week amidst chaos, death and curfew.

Sri Lanka has now turned into a land of mile-long petrol queues, gas queues, 13-hour power cuts, unending citizens protests alongside that the country is officially declared bankrupt and according to the calculations of John Hopkins University by April 2022 the cost of living had risen by a 132%. Our smallest most vulnerable citizens, our children are expected to keep studying and stay focused on their exams which by the way are now around the corner.

The disruptions continued on 17 May when schools reopened and on 20 May closed again because of fuel shortages. This brings us to 23 May and the beginning of this current O/L exam.

It’s been exhausting just recapping this, can you imagine these children and their families living through it. In fact, it might even be questioned how a Government which does not fulfil its basic responsibility by providing children with reasonable access to schooling can then insist that these children sit for exams. Is it really a coincidence that Sri Lanka is one of the highest-ranking countries for teenage suicide?

Who can we hold accountable for these crimes against our children? Our hearts are with these brave children, these children who have to get up every day and make their way to these exam halls sometimes without fuel, some of them without food, children who return to homes without electricity and return to their books with no sense of what their future might actually hold.

As parents, educators and citizens of this country let us come together on behalf of these silent innocents and demand that in lieu of the unending turmoil and hardship they have had to endure, in lieu of the complete lack of support and stability that we have been able to give them, in lieu of the psychological harm brought about because those in charge have just not done their job, let us demand that no child is left behind and no child is failed at this overall exam. 

Our children have suffered enough and struggled silently as the adults in charge of this country have bartered away their futures. Our children are heroes simply for having the courage to turn up at these exams. Not a single one of them from amongst these 517,496 children should be taken out of school or should be penalised any further.