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Ad hoc policies during a crisis will be fatal for education

27 Mar 2022

By Asiri Ekanayake The Sri Lanka Education Forum is alarmed by the ad hoc nature of recent policies issued by the Government regarding education when all signs point to a dire situation in funding for school education due to the ongoing economic crisis.  The latest development is the decision made by the National Water Supply and Drainage Board to begin charging State-run schools for their water supply, though Education Ministry Secretary Prof. Kapila Perera says that the Education Ministry is not involved in the matter. According to the Ceylon Teachers’ Union, 83 schools in the Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Vavuniya, and Mullaitivu Districts have already been sent bills backdated to January 2022. The Treasury has also withdrawn from settling the water bills. Another issue is the decision by the Western Provincial Council to stop printing test papers for term exams. Whether students need paper and pencil tests for subjects like health, citizenship education, and practical and technical skills is another question. However, these cancellations are indicators of the troubles to come. Yet, different arms of the ministry and state ministries seem to go on with business as usual. Did not the Ministry anticipate these issues when it announced plans to allocate Rs. 500 million to provide smart TVs for 7,000 schools? The stated objective was to help students catch up with lessons missed during the school shut down during the past year. As the EFSL has argued, this is an ill-planned initiative. Why would children sit in front of a TV while in school? What are the teachers to do? If it is for after-school hours, are there plans to recruit tutors or pay for teachers to stay after school?  How could the Ministry make decisions to allocate 500 million to a ‘smart TV’ project with no clear rationale knowing well that we are in the middle of a severe crisis, and issues like cutting water to schools are imminent? Furthermore, the Ministry needs a plan to deploy existing human resources efficiently during the crisis.  Sri Lanka has a favourable student-to-teacher ratio, but the teachers are not deployed as needed. Many schools lack teachers while others have a surplus. Besides, Education Minister Dinesh Gunawardena stated that over 850 schools in the country were reported to have been closed down during the meeting of the Ministerial Consultative Committee on Education held on 10 March 2022.  The Government also plans to recruit 4,700 teachers from education colleges and 4,000 graduates to start teaching at State-run schools in the country. The graduates are to teach G.C.E. Ordinary Level and G.C.E. Advanced Level subjects while 1,700 of the teachers obtained from colleges will teach classes from Grade 1 to Grade 5. It is doubtful whether these decisions made within a larger plan for efficient deployment of teachers. Further, the teachers who will join Government schools are required to teach at the same school for a period of 10 years and will not be eligible for transfer requests till the allocated time has elapsed. Does the Government not have a policy on the terms of service for teachers? Why issue ad hoc policies on newly-recruited teachers? If the Ministry does not accept that the situation is dire and allows various departments to make ad hoc policies, school education will receive an unnecessary hard hit by the economic crisis.  The Ministry needs to come up with a comprehensive plan to deal with the economic crisis, saving scant resources to serve the neediest first. Otherwise, the suffering of the people at the queues for gas, petrol, and diesel will intensify, hitting them where it hurts the most: the education of their children.


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