Reforming education: Finishing the unfinished task - Part III:

A success story

Continued from yesterday

Excerpts of the Dr. C.W.W. Kannangara memorial lecture delivered by Prof. Carlo Fonseka in Colombo.

The free education system inaugurated by Dr. Kannangara has been in operation now for over half a century and there is no question that it has made higher education and the economic and social advantages which accrue from higher education, accessible to very many people educated exclusively in swabasha. I believe that any fall in ‘standards’ has been more than compensated for by the concomitant increase in perceived distributive social justice. The task before us is to ensure that future beneficiaries of our free education scheme are adequately equipped to adjust optimally to the globalized world of the 21st Century. When compared with other developing countries, the story of education in Sri Lanka in the 20th Century has been a success story.

As researchers in this field have pointed out, our education system has contributed not only to the economic advancement of the population by increasing the earning capacity of many individuals and thereby reducing poverty levels in the country, but has also promoted better family health, fertility control, and empowerment of women. These have been the outcomes of direct public investment in education. The Free Education championed by Dr. C.W.W. Kannangara, has been widely acknowledged as the single most important reform that wrought this favourable social transformation. There is no question that in providing access to primary and secondary education and in achieving gender parity in education, the free education system has been a boon to the under-privileged people of this country.

It is at the level of tertiary education, however, that there has been a degree of disillusionment on the part of many students, particularly during the past two decades or so. There is evidence that in the recent past as many as 20 percent of the 20,000 students who are offered admission to our 15 universities every year do not accept admission. Having been constantly reminded that they were inheritors of a pearl of great price, many students have come to feel that the pearl of great price has proved to be a false pearl. Their perception is not entirely ungrounded in fact. Therefore, the principal reforms required to finish the unfinished task initiated by Dr. Kannangara are those designed to infuse a measure of excellence to free education.

Preliminaries

Reforms have to be formulated with two main considerations in mind, one economic and the other historical. The economic consideration is based on the realistic premise that ‘free education’ is not really ‘free’. As with lunch, so with education, you cannot have it for free; somebody finally has to pay the bill. Free education in democratic Sri Lanka has been paid for by the Government of the enfranchised people, run by elected representatives of the people, for the benefit of the people. Broadly speaking, at present Sri Lanka has about four million children, the vast majority of them in government schools, who have to be educated out of resources derived from the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As Table 3 indicates, even by the standards prevailing in developing countries in our region of the world, Sri Lanka invests only a modest level of its national income and government budget on education.

The group of lower middle-income countries to which Sri Lanka now belongs, spends more than four percent of their GDPs on education. South Asian countries devote on the average about 2.9 percent of their national income to education. Sri Lanka has never reached even that low average level of investment in education. (For comparison, Malaysia spent eight percent of its national income on education in 2007 and education expenditure accounted for 28 percent of Government expenditure).

Realism

Let us face it: good education is expensive. The acquisition of precious, weightless knowledge has proved to be one of the dearest pursuits in the modern world. According to a recent estimate, in the best of the private schools in the USA, education can cost anything up to US$ 30,000 annually.

What, it may be asked, do students get for such a huge investment? First, they receive an education of high academic standard provided by highly qualified, trained teachers. Second, they get well-equipped classes half the size of those in public schools so that students have a greater chance to participate actively in the teaching-learning process, with opportunities to meet teachers for one-on-one tutorials. Third, they are exposed to a great range of extra curricular activities of high quality. Given our resources, we are unable to offer such a rich and varied educational experience even to a few post-graduate students in our country. Sad to say, Dr. Kannangara’s claim that our State Councillors in 1944 “found education dear and left it cheap” has become true in a sense he never intended. At all events, reforms suggested should, above all, be affordable by the country in the present stage of its development.

Historically, reforms suggested should not constitute too radical a departure from the framework we have inherited and jealously preserved. Finally, considering that these reforms are being suggested in the context of a Dr. C.W.W. Kannangara Memorial Lecture, it is appropriate that they should, as far as possible, be in consonance with the spirit of the reforms initiated by Dr. Kannangara himself. At this point it is relevant to recall and emphasize the fact that when Dr. Kannangara presented his recommendations for reform of education to the State Council in May 1944, he unequivocally advocated a policy of bilingual education in the post-primary school. Indeed, in the Central Schools he inaugurated, English was the medium of instruction. When Dr. Tara de Mel was Secretary to the Education Ministry she tried valiantly, with some success, to revive and implement this particular recommendation of Dr. Kannangara.

Specific recommendations

Her inspiring battle cry was “achieving excellence with equity”. As she saw it, introduction of more English into the free education system was the component required to finish the unfinished task of reforming education.

In view of all of the above considerations, what are the steps to be taken to finish the unfinished task of reforming free education in our country? Let me enumerate them one by one for your careful and critical scrutiny.

1. In 2010, the government should announce the policy that from a specified year, say 2015, education in the universities would be bilingual, that is to say, in swabasha and English. This implies that by 2015, the universities must have the staff required to provide the courses they offer even in English.

2. In the primary school, the medium of instruction should continue to be swabasha. Students in primary school, however, should be exposed to good, spoken English, by means of modern audio-visual equipment. (Young children have a program in their brains to learn whatever languages they are exposed to).

3. In the secondary school, the medium of education could be Sinhala, Tamil or English according to available facilities and parental choice.

4. At least a credit pass in Sinhala or Tamil at the GCE (O/L) Examination should be a compulsory requirement to qualify for university education.

5. The medium of education at the GCE A/L could be Sinhala, Tamil or English according to facilities available and the choice of students. Therefore, selection to universities will be on the basis of results obtained in any of those languages.

6. Once students are selected to different courses in the universities, they should be required to spend a year on a Foundation Course which would include an intensive total immersion course in English using all the modern techniques of teaching-learning languages available. In addition, the Foundation Course should include the elements of computer literacy. Cultural studies could well form a useful and enjoyable part of the Foundation Course.

7. At the end of the Foundation Course, all students would be required to take a comprehensive examination that certifies competency at the required level in English.

Only the degree certificates of those who achieve the required level of competence in English will certify that the course they followed was conducted in the English medium.

I dare to think that this set of reforms which will undoubtedly improve the quality of free education in a maximally cost-effective manner with minimum disruption of existing educational arrangements, would have been endorsed by the great and good man, Dr. Christopher William Wijekoon Kannangara.

Concluded