The prolonged period of crisis Sri Lanka faced since 2019 has taken a toll on its education system, and experts have been warning, over the last two years, that there is much to be done to address issues in the sector. Even today, in a climate where Sri Lanka has made some progress to ‘stabilise’ the economic situation, the education sector and learning continues to be negatively impacted. 

On the one hand, with State expenditure stringently curtailed, and due to strong austerity measures which are in place, the priority families had placed on effective education for their children has slipped a step in the order of priority. Sadly, the options to address the situatio   n are also few, as the island remains a country ‘in default’.  

According to Research Fellow Dr. Nisha Arunatilake at the think tank Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), many children aged 5-16 are not attending schools at present. Further, there are significant gaps in children with disabilities and those from vulnerable communities such as from low income backgrounds attending school on a regular basis. A total of 25% of schoolchildren don’t attend schools despite having access to schooling, a report from the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) claimed during a discussion titled ‘Economic Scars of Multiple Crises: From data to policy’ held yesterday (8) to mark the launch of the think tank’s annual report on the state of the economy. “A lot of the students who don’t attend school are those with special needs and those who are from poorer backgrounds,” IPS Research Fellow Dr. Nisha Arunatilake said at the conference. According to the IPS, the resources to help those with special needs are scarce and that often, these resources are concentrated in ‘elite’ schools as opposed to ‘non-elite’ schools. A United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) report on Sri Lanka alleges that 23.5% of children with special needs are excluded from mainstream education while 55.4% of the disabled population, aged 15-19 years, is not engaged in any educational activity or vocational training. In order to solve these issues relating to education, Dr. Arunatilake recommended the use of technology. “As there is a difficulty in getting special educational needs teachers, we recommend the use of apps for students with special needs,” Dr. Arunatilake said, adding “And, as for the less privileged schools, the use of a virtual lab is recommended due to the inaccessibility of lab facilities”

Meanwhile, the impact of students not attending schools in a consistent manner, lack of State funding and the lack of a consistent policies for education, results in students across the island performing poorly in critical subjects such as English and mathematics, the think tank said.  “Even though many children are going to school, they are not learning,” Dr. Arunatilake said. “The average child’s score for English in this country is 34% while the average score for maths is 24%.” According to her, a previous study by the IPS showed that urban schools outperform rural schools when it comes to English education, with several of the urban schools having both students who have a good proficiency in English and those who have limited exposure to English, thus presenting English teachers with a challenge on how to structure the curriculum. The disparity in funding and resourcing schools becomes more evident as a report published by the World Bank (WB) shows that there is a disparity between urban and rural schools with regard to the mathematics performance in Sri Lanka, with urban schools performing better than rural schools. The report also states that mathematics and science at the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level was only available at approximately 600 schools as of 2018 data. Dr. Arunatilake suggested that unequal funding is to blame for the poor performances in maths and English with the majority of the funding going to ‘elite’ schools, while other schools lack resources such as adequate teachers and learning materials, This issue is compounded by the lack of education policy consistency across Governmental shifts. "We have had several Education Ministers with several different policies," Dr. Arunatilake said, adding that "And, there has been a lack of consistency among these policies." 

The IPS also highlighted a trend of female students outperforming their male counterparts. As such, the Government which will emerge from the 14 November elections, irrespective of their composition, will have significant challenges to navigate with education, poverty and malnutrition being some of the pressing issues which will need priority focus.