Human Resources Development of Sri Lanka for the 21st Century

Keynote address by Ariyaratne Hewage, Secretary Ministry of Education at a ceremony to felicitate the recipient of 2006/ Asia-Pacific Excellence Award - HRD Leaders Piyasena Gamage, Minister of Vocational and Technical Training

SPEECH: I am pleased to deliver the keynote address at this historical event on conferring the 2006 Asia-Pacific Excellence Award for Minister of Vocational and Technical Training Piyasena Gamage.

It is a great honour accorded not only to Piyasena Gamage but the entire country particularly the Human Resource Development (HRD) endeavours. He provided the correct leadership and directed the Vocational and Technical Training programs towards achieving a significant change in human resource development in Sri Lanka.

He had personally overseen the programs conducted and contributed immensely to develop required human resource base in the country.

Recognizing the services provided by Piyasena Gamage, Colombo Plan Staff College for Technical Education has conferred the 2006 Asia Pacific Excellence Award on Human Resource Development upon him.

Colombo Plan Staff College for Technical Education is an inter-governmental international organisation of 29 member countries which was established to promote HRD through Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Asia and Pacific Region.

This award is given annually to the top five outstanding leaders who have contributed immensely in HRD. This organisation is based in Manila, Philippines.

Development of human resources is critical for national development and in fact, human resource is the prime resource base for countries like Sri Lanka. As we do not have an abundance of physical resources, our focus should be on developing the available human resources.

It is necessary to change the vicious cycles of poverty, violence, unemployment, illiteracy and other socially undesirable elements and priority should be given to provide integrated and coordinated programs to develop HRD.

Major goal of any country today is to increase its productivity and thus the economists and policy makers recommend giving high priority for the development of human capital over the physical capital.

In consistent to this concept, some countries such as India, Korea and Sultanate of Oman have even changed the name of the Ministry of Education as the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Our traditional system of primary, secondary and higher education mainly focuses on guiding children for University education with priority on such subjects as medicine, engineering, law, commerce etc.

Most of our teachers and parents always guide the children to follow this traditional path. Our system of assessing the performance of students at school level is mainly based on written examinations.

Students who complete their studies up to grade 11 sit for the General Certificate Examination (Ordinary Level) offering nine subjects. Even though, this is not a competitive examination overall performance levels of the students are not at all satisfactory. Table 1 below shows the overall performance at the 2005 examination.

Table 1. GCE Ordinary Level Examination Performance - 2005

No. sat		No. qualified 

Percentage	for A/L
307,771		146,862	47.72

Source: Dept. of Examination - 2005

Admission to the public universities is based on the marks obtained at GCE Advance Level Examination. It has been observed that about 15% of the eligible candidates could enter the universities as the resources available are limited.

When 15% of eligible candidates enter the public universities what happens to the rest? A few of those who can afford send their children to foreign universities not only in the West but also in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Majority who drops out at GCE Ordinary Level and Advance Level Examinations doesn’t have proper direction and guidance and therefore they have to give up hopes of pursuing higher education. We do not have an effective system to provide opportunities in higher education for this majority group.

Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University at New York, USA believes that international donor organisation support the developing countries mainly to develop their primary and secondary education but not very much the higher education.

As Professor Mamdani says, “If your object is to transform general education, you have to begin with higher education. For higher education is the strategic heart of education”.

This gives a very important direction to the policy markers of developing countries. We should prepare our plans and strategies to provide more opportunities in higher education for our majority of children who did not secure admission to traditional universities.

How can we do this? Tertiary and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) should not only provide job oriented training for skills development but should also provide opportunities to pursue “higher education” at first degree and post graduate levels. Our key motto in eduction should therefore be “to reach same destination through different routes”.

Students enter the universities on the basis of ‘Z’ score and district based cutoff marks at advanced level calculated according to the performance at different subjects. We must provide alternative opportunities for other students as well to secure higher educational qualifications.

Planned annual intake to vocational and technical training today is approximately 50,000. However with a large drop out rate of about 15-20 percent, the number retained until the completion is around 30,000 which is very low.

Considering the limited opportunities available in higher education at present, we should seriously review our plans to develop human resources in our country. Are we anywhere closer to our neighbours in this regard? We must be mindful about the fact that seven years have already passed since the dawn of the 21st Century.

What are the global trends in 21st Century? What has happened in other countries over the past seven years? There are five highly interlinked topics on which the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg rightfully focused.

They are globalisation, trade, poverty, development and environment. We have to understand the whole, diverse, complex reality and to act in adequate informed ways. This is where education comes in and it is clear that education, particularly the higher education has to play a major role in addressing these issues.

World Conference on Higher Education held in Paris in October 5-9, 1998, concluded with a World Declaration on Higher Education which included 15 key elements.

The first element of this declaration is very important for all policymakers and educationists. It says,” Higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit, in keeping with Article 26.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a consequence, no discrimination can be accepted in granting access to higher education on grounds of race, gender, language, religion or economic, cultural or social distinctions, or physical disabilities”.

It is therefore, essential that higher education plays a key role in achieving the sustainable development of any country. The roles of higher education are manifold as given below: In General:

Development, transfer and preservation of knowledge in particular:

* Training Teachers/Developing curricula

* Training doctors and professionals

* Training experts/the legal system/the administration, business and industry

Crucial role:

* Sustaining and developing the intellectual and cultural base of society

* Promoting human development and helping to preserve cultural identity

* Giving inspiration and justified pride to citizens in the achievements over time of their own society

* Promoting dialogue to appreciate and respect cultural diversity

(Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century, Vision and Action, UNESCO, 1998.)

The present complex situation requires our serious thought and consideration as we have to prepare the next generation for a different world, a largely a borderless world. It has been observed that more and more knowledge is produced and as estimates indicate the global knowledge now doubles in less than every five years.

UNESCO, the international organisation responsible for education has rightfully dedicated the 21st Century for marching towards a knowledge society.

“The idea of information society is based on technological breakthroughs. The concept of knowledge societies encompasses much broader economic, social, ethical and political dimensions.

Knowledge Society should be able to integrate all its members and to promote new forms of solidarity involving both present and future generations as knowledge is a public good available to each and every individual”. (Towards Knowledge Societies, UNESCO, 2005) A new value is placed on “Human Capital” and therefore public sector institutions responsible for the development of human resources should play a lead role.

We should learn lessons from our great neighbour, India. The Government of India has established National Knowledge Commission of India in 2005. This Commission functions directly under the Prime Minister of India and the knowledge Commission has been assigned with specific targets with time frames.

As knowledge is rapidly increasing the need to share knowledge with all becomes more important. It has therefore, become imperative to promote Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which helps to achieve this objective. ICT industry is fast growing and its development in the Asia is remarkable.

Today, there are lots of services outsourced by developed countries in the West to developing countries. For example, in India there are hundreds of thousand youths doing such outsourced services and earning a foreign salary while staying at home.

In 2003, some 25,000 US tax returns were done in India. In 2004 the number was 100,000 and in 2005 it rose to 400,000. A customer in USA who dials the bank for any banking service is answered by an Indian sitting at a call center in Bangalore or any other part in India.

When Thomas Friedman, a famous US journalist visited Infosys Technologies Limited in Bangalore and interviewed its CEO Nandan Nilekani to understand the knowledge revolution taking place in India, Nilekani said that he could speak with anyone in New York, London, Boston, Beijing or Singapore on live through teleconferencing looking at the screen. They have created a platform to deliver intellectual capital to anywhere.

Based on Nilekani’s explanation as to how playing field has been levelled, Thomas Friedman wrote his famous book “The World is Flat” which is the best selling book in the world today. This book gives a descriptive account on how India has transformed its traditional economy into a knowledge-based economy.

There are enormous opportunities in the field of Information and Communication Technology and countries like Sri Lanka must harness such opportunities without any further delay.

Some people tend to believe that ICT facilities such as computers with Internet connections are available only in urban centers and therefore there is a “digital divide” between urban and rural areas. I had the opportunity to visit the e-village at Mahavilachchiya, 40 kilometres away from Anuradhapura, in North-Central Province in late February 2007.

There are no telephone facilities available at this village but anyone with a laptop computer can sit under a tree and access internet. They have made the entire village a Wy-Fy zone and the village is networked by eight transmission towers.

At present, 29 houses have been ‘meshed’ and there are 59 computers in the village houses, which has the highest density of computers. Nandasiri Wanninayake, a teacher from the village has provided the leadership for this e-village.

He had been able to obtain support of several local and foreign persons through his website to develop the ICT facility in this village. Young girls and boys have developed web pages and are link[Em]ed to some companies in the US.

When Intel Chairman visited Sri Lanka in 2006, he invited the youths from Mahavilachchiya village to the main seminar held in Colombo. Three young girls made presentations using new technology on how they have developed web pages in the village.

Recently, Microsoft Sri Lanka organised a competition for innovative teachers in the public schools. It is interesting to note that except for one teacher from a Colombo school, all other awards were won by teachers from the schools located in far rural areas.

I am happy to say that Ministry of Education on the directions given by the President and Minister of Education is now planning to establish on pilot basis five e-villages in selected rural areas in the country. We can therefore, break the digital divide and build a ‘digital bridge’ to take the new technology to the masses.

It is interesting to note that education system in Singapore has introduced broad-based opportunity for its young generations. They have a fast-track education system through which they identify smart children at early stages and guide them to enter the university during a shorter period of time.

Other majority children go through normal system up to ‘O’ level and then are guided to enter poly-technical colleges for vocational training. These students can later have access to higher education and obtain degrees in their respective professional fields.

These students are also able to complete meaningful higher education as they could relate their work experience easily with the studies.

We, in Sri Lanka also therefore should have a system of education where majority of children could have access to higher education. This cannot be achieved only through the traditional university system on the basis of admitting children on ‘Z’ scores at Advanced Level Examination.

We should expand opportunities at vocational and technical education institutions and streamline the system to provide more opportunities in higher education for a majority of our children.

I am happy to mention that Ministry of Vocational and Technical Training has already taken steps to set up a University of Vocational Technology (UNIVOTECH) to achieve this goal.

The students do not require formal ‘A’ level qualifications to enter this university. If we need to achieve the envisaged development and reduce poverty by providing effective job opportunities, it is imperative that we develop our human resource base with broad based opportunities for our young generations.

Surveys conducted by different authorities have revealed that there is high demand for jobs such as surveyors, nurses, paramedical practitioners, etc. in local and foreign job markets and such professions are highly paid.

It is a sine-quo-non to establish an efficient and effective organisational mechanism to achieve this objective. Therefore, Ministries of Education, Vocational and Technical Training, Higher Education and other relevant Ministries although are established as separate Ministries, should established a suitable mechanism to closely co-ordinate and plan the strategies on HRD for the improvement of country’s economic and social status.

We can all go to the same destination but through different routes. The youths should not compete to go through the crowded routes, as majority would face the fate of dropping out.

Instead, they can take different routes at different times of their lives and arrive at the same destination of higher education, as this will be a win-win situation for all.

We have no other way out to face this present, precarious economic and social situation the only way that we have, is to prepare our future generations for the Knowledge Society of 21st Century.

Let us all join hands and march towards it.