Archives

by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

One of my aunts had a habit of saying 'Columbus has discovered....' when we claimed to have found out something that had been painfully obvious previously. I felt like saying something of the sort when the papers announced recently that books destined for free distribution to schools had been buried in warehouses and the Ministry had gone ahead and ordered more at exorbitant costs.

I had been there before. Last year, tired of my repeated complaints that the Advanced Level General English book had not reached schools, Tara de Mel asked me to devise a scheme to distribute the books efficiently. Part of her anxiety had to do with the fact that the book intended for students beginning their Advanced Level work in May 2001 had not yet been handed to the printer.

That book was supposed to combine the earlier books 1 and 2, which were far too much for most rural schools. Book 1 had originally been entrusted to the Provincial Ministries to print and sell but, after one Chief Minister decided he would give it free, it was decided that all Provinces should follow suit. This was in 1999. In 2000 it was decided that free distribution of these pilot books should continue, but that the combined volume would be sold. However, producing the two single volumes, centrally this time, was fraught with delay, and it was only towards the end of 2000 that copies of book 1 were sent out for those who had started that September, and copies of book 2 for the 1999 batch. Since there were a fair number of graduates from my university doing the course in many rural schools, I found out that many of these books had not reached. Hence my complaints, full of rude remarks about the Educational Publications Department, to the new Secretary. When she asked me to take over, I found that there were enough spare copies still with EPD of each of the books, to allow all students starting in 2001 to have either one or the other.

Lacking all faith in the previous system, I suggested distributing the books through Regional English Support Centres, charging Rs 50 per book.

This was a token, in accordance with the general practice of charging for Advanced Level books, but it was also intended to introduce a system that ensured some sort of responsibility. By then I had realized that, when lots of books are sent out without any system of financial accountability, they tend to disappear, and it is the poorer schools that lose out when there are not enough books for all.

EPD, with an efficiency that astonished me, but which I began to realize was characteristic under the new Commissioner Tara de Mel had appointed, sent the books out within a week. That prompted the other books to come crawling out of the woodwork. I found zonal directors also receiving books, not from EPD, but from the provincial offices to which EPD had efficiently dispatched them several months earlier.

Meanwhile, to complicate things, a few people started complaining that the Ministry was beginning to sell books, which was a threat to free education that had to be resisted. Politicians got into the act and declared that they would resist such measures. The poor Secretary got blamed, par for the course for anyone exceptionally efficient, and some RESCs panicked. Those however which had established good relations with teachers in their catchment areas found that students welcomed the book. It should be noted though that several still remain in stock, for a number of reasons. One is that very few schools got through more than one book, though originally each student had been meant to get both. Then there were the warehouse stockpiles, intended for earlier students, that were sent out in 2001 to be given to students of that year.

Finally, since the books were free, principals had given them out on loan and collected them back for new batches of students. This made nonsense of the fact that these books were meant to be used actively. But that I suppose is a concept that cannot easily be activated in the culture of passive learning we have institutionalized.

This year, with Tara de Mel in exile, responsibility for these books was taken over once again by the Ministry. The consolidated volume that should have been ready a year ago, having been forgotten for several months, is now said to be almost ready. It is to be sold at the usual Ministry outlets, which means two places in Colombo, at cost, which means a couple of hundred rupees. I have suggested that schools be told they can still collect books from RESCs if they wish, but no action has been taken. Even though classes began in May, it is obviously of no concern to anyone to try to ensure that students have books.

Training to teach this course happens only sporadically. The examination paper this April was extremely tough (students all over the country were supposed to know the meaning of idoms like 'keeping cool') and the results are likely to be bad. The earlier hope, that this course will improve English levels in the rural areas where even meaningless Ordinary Level passes run at less than 20%, does not bear thinking about. Indeed, soon there will be an outcry about what seems a useless course, and it may well have to be abolished.

Many years ago, when I ran the English course at Affiliated University Colleges, and insisted that students buy books, I ran into lots of opposition. This however was from populist administrators, not from the students who used the books, and appreciated that they were made available at cost. The students did however protest at the books produced at the UGC, which were reisographed rather than printed, lacked illustrations and still cost much more than those I had had produced.

I told Prof Balasuriya, Vice Chairman at the time, that he really should do something about the cost. He replied rather sadly that he could not stop his staff producing them on overtime. A few months later the man who operated the reisograph machine was interdicted. It seemed he had been selling off lots of consumables, paper and expensive ink, and claiming these had been used to produce books. That was why the prices were so outrageous. This, I should add, was about the time of the scandal at the Ministry of Education, which led to the resignation of the Permanent Secretary at the time.

The costs incurred by all this dishonesty and incompetence will never be recovered. Why should anyone bother? They are part of the country's ever increasing debt, a liability we all have to shoulder - except of course for the policy makers. They will continue to ignore the simple fact that free books, unless based on a voucher scheme, will bleed the country dry. As populists they will claim this is for the sake of schoolchildren, and they will continue to claim this in the face of all evidence that it is not schoolchildren who benefit but a few unscrupulous bureaucrats - and in some cases those very policy makers themselves.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager