2007 - a golden year for education reforms

BY MANJULA Fernando

THE Education Reforms first introduced to the State education system in 1997, under the direction of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga will reach an important milestone in 2007.

The year will see landmark revisions to the primary secondary and senior secondary curricula and the overall examinations set up as part of its on going reforms process, Education Secretary Dr. Tara de Mel said.

She said the Ministry has already completed revising the curricula, jointly with the National Institute of Education and National Education Commission, to make way for them to print the new textbooks by at least November 2006.

"The revised curriculum will be posted in the Education Ministry and the NIE websites after September 30 for anyone to know the changes to be made to the curriculum or the particular subject syllabi in 2007," she said adding that the process was transparent and for the first time they have set a system for the parents and others to be informed of what's going on.

The Education reforms have set a eight year curricula revision for State schools to lever the local education system in par with the regional and international standards. The next revision therefore is to be effected in 2007.

Primary Reforms

Dr. De Mel elaborating the proposed revisions for the primary sector said the primary students will be introduced to use english language to learn mathematical concepts in the classroom.

This will be a step further from their activity based oral English introduced for primary students at the initial reforms stage.

Imparting language skills, other than English, for Sinhala and Tamil students will be another principal component in the primary reforms. The aim will be to teach Sinhala students to converse in Tamil and vice versa, Dr. De Mel said.

The primary students will also have the opportunity to learn concepts of computer education and IT, a long overdue change, presently open to a privileged few who goes to international and certain private schools, in Sri Lanka.

Secondary Reforms

In line with the secondary reforms the project work will be made compulsory for GCE Ordinary Level.

"A lot of teachers and students have neglected this area. With the revision we plan to make the project work and the school based assessment compulsory from 2007."

"It is not fair to determine what a student has learned for over three years in a three hour test paper.

What if he suffers from a headache at the time answering the paper. The SBA helps to identify true competencies of the student and will make learning fun," Dr.De Mel remarked.

A major change in the secondary level is the introduction of Chemistry, Physics and Biology subjects (non-compulsory) to the GCE Ordinary Level curriculum.

Students will have the opportunity to study these subjects either in English or Sinhala media.

The changes in the pipeline also include supplementary reading and special periods in the time table (two or three) for extra-curricular activities or to go to the library for reading. A novel addition will be the component of learning through CDs, using software applications.

Senior Secondary Reforms

Senior secondary reforms include making the project work compulsory for the GCE AL certificate however, this will not have any bearing at the university entry stage.

The A/L students will receive a CD along with their textbook, outlining activities proposed, and contents of the text book in the soft form to encourage the use of computers in the learning process.

Exam Reforms

The Secretary said they were changing the current examination set up to divert the present old fashioned testing system to a more advanced process.

The test papers will be designed to review basic competencies of students which sans cramming bookloads of theory to get through exams.

"Benchmarking our test papers among ourselves will not help. We are planning to compare them with those of other countries, like India, Malaysia, UK...to improve quality and standard."

School Based Management

She said under the on-going reforms the school based management will be introduced in a total of 1500 schools with over 2500 students from next year as a pilot project.

Although this is a novel thing for us, most other countries including African nations in the developing world are using this method to streamline school administration, management and promote good governance of big schools.

"This is in no way an attempt to privatise schools but a genuine effort to give autonomy to schools in their internal affairs," the Secretary stressed.

We have university councils and in big companies management boards.

Similarly with a school council or a board, instead of one person (the principal) taking decisions, there will be room to hear the voices of all stake holders, she commented.

"The Ministry funding will be there but they will have more autonomy to decide what to do and more freedom at the procurement stage and so on replacing the ministry's dictatorship."

The school board will be represented by past pupils, parents, senior teachers and a society leader.

To ensure all schools stick to one course there, however, will be parameters set by the Ministry.

Schools Beautification

The Ministry recently received the approval to allocate funding for infrastructure development, to use funds for non-conventional infrastructure enhancements like landscaping, modernising interior and new furniture.

This will be piloted from this year in all 320 National and 420 Navodya schools.

Raised Funding

She concluded adding that the Education Ministry under the leadership of the President has always allocated a lion's share to the education sector to improve facilities and the quality in all forms in the state education system.

The Ministry has informed the Treasury that it needs an additional Rs.20 billion through the next year's budget to fund the line up of projects it has earmarked for 2006.

The Education Secretary expressed hope that at least 75 per cent of this requirement will be allocated by the Treasury making it the highest ever increase the education sector has received so far.