Education system:

Meeting challenges of advancing world

Joseph Stalin

While appreciating the Editor’s keen interest on contemporary issues of education (the Editorial - ‘Teachers and Term Tests’ - Daily News on 21/05/2010), we would like to inform the reader further on the subject.’

‘At the outset, let us look at the important question of why the authorities decided to conduct the test on Zonal basis’. It was because there were many aggravated problems discovered by the Education Ministry when conducting term tests on school level as

* Questionable sums of money were collected from the students

* Papers were not upto the required standard

* Shortcomings in teaching and completing syllabi are not recognized by the parents

* Less privileged students were discriminated

To illustrate the points further, let us have a brief look at the popular urban schools, a’k’a ‘Supiri Pasal’, at one end of the spectrum. In general, their student population exceeds 3,000.’ At the opposite end, there are the majority of schools with less than 300.’ Often, in these schools, hardly two dozen students appear for GCE O/L class. As the case with many of these schools, that are want of sufficient funds, it is impractical to design and print just two dozen question papers for each subject. What happens normally is that the teacher would write down the question paper on the blackboard to be copied by the students.

Tuition class syndrome

With the spread of the private tuition class syndrome during the last two decades, a pattern occurred where the schools purchased test papers from private education institutions, that does not adhere to any standard whatsoever but mostly promotes the particular private educational institutions’ commercial interests in a specific locality. The less privileged areas, their schools and the underprivileged students were at the receiving end of this. As their poor counterparts, even the students who were able to share the costs ultimately were not much better off when facing an islandwide examination as GCE O/L.

In order to minimize discrepancy and irregularity of a system that hinders the fundamental right of Education to our children, a committee was appointed to assess term test procedure and tender new proposals for SBA (School Based Assessments). “The Concepts and Details of SBA: Grade 6-13 was a seminal work produced as a result of this timely intervention by late Prof’ Lal Perera. He points out three distinct advantages of conducting term tests on Zonal level (pg’36)

1. Zonal tests facilitate national evaluation of student performance at Zonal level

2. Shortcomings in teaching syllabi in different schools could be avoided

3. Many countries evaluate student performance on a national basis.

As a result of much needed intervention, in 2008 Education Ministry launched a pilot project in Western, North-Western and Sabaragamuwa Provinces for the 2nd term test under the title ‘Assessment and Term Test Coordination Project.

Naturally, as expected from such an innovative intervention, many bottlenecks were identified. Alas, the pundits of Education Ministry without taking the necessary remedial measures fine tune the mechanism based on the invaluable experience of the pilot project and to iron out the rough edges to facilitate effective implementation, went on to implement the program as a whole to conduct term tests islandwide! The result was a farcical blunder.

Consequently, the then Education Minister Susil Premajayanth appointed a committee to investigate upon the matter and it was reported that 17 out of 94 Zonal officers have miserably failed to conduct the term tests. The report was given wide publicity resulting in public pressure for the former Education Secretary Nimal Bandara to issue a fresh circular (2010-16) on April 24, 2010 authorizing the schools to conduct term tests on school level.

Monitoring mechanism

Now, to look at the inevitable question of why the Zonal Educational Officers have failed to perform their allotted important duties, let us turn to the crux of the matter at hand. It is a pity that there is a dearth of skillful and knowledgeable officials in education authorities has to be highlighted. Many of them, who are political appointees, are not competent enough for whatever task they are assigned. Lack of a proper monitoring mechanism by the provincial and national hierarchy make matters worse. The case in point is the re-examination of the GCE (O/L) Mathematics paper in January 24, 2009. Not only the State had to bear the additional expenses while the inconveniences brought to the students were immeasurable. The war was at its peak in the North and the children in Vanni were unable to sit for the re-examination. To make the matters worse, no appropriate steps were taken against the irresponsible officer who caused the debacle. As this was an incident at a National level examination, it is anybody’s guess to the plight of tests at local school and zonal level.

Let us now turn back to the Editors declaration as to the objectives have not been achieved at term tests on zonal level. If that is the case as the Editor declares, the educationists should quickly identify the causes behind such a failure and look deep in to roots of why and where we have failed. Remedial measures should be carried out at all the concerned levels. Otherwise, our education system will be stagnant forever and never progress to meeting the challenges of advancing world.

A test is not merely writing a set of questions, contrary to familiar wisdom, it requires a special training and guidance to construct standard test items (there is a special jargon and methodology for testing). Those who are not familiar with testing and evaluation probably assume that those who can teach must necessarily be able to make the test papers as well.

Errors and malpractices

Even though the Editor says that the Zonal officers are reluctant to shoulder an additional job despite the fact that it is part of their responsibility, in reality the preparing of test papers is done by the most experienced, trained and knowledgeable teachers who are well respected in their respective subjects. For example, writing and editing of Grade eight Science paper is done by the Science director and the In-Service Advisor (ISA) of that particular zone together with expert science teachers from various schools. Hence it is a task that requires collective effort and only then will the quality of the test paper remains high and the process is plagued less with errors and malpractices.

To conduct the term tests effectively in future, we would like to make the following recommendations:

* Provincial, Zonal, Divisional and Subject directors should be appointed with minimum political influence

* Teachers and ISAs should be provided with mandatory comprehensive training in testing

* Sufficient funds should be allocated to educational officers in order to conduct tests in a required uniform quality

* Since many extra-curricular activities as sports meet, educational tours, various functions are conducted during the first term, it is more practical to assist students through SBA without having 1st term test. In reality, there is no sufficient time to even do the supposed SBA. Ex: a student in Grade 10 has to do 31 assessments for a term

For 6 main subjects = 6 X 4 = 24

For 3 basket subjects = 3 X 3 = 9

For religion = 1 X 2 = 2

31

Throughout the year the students are assessed by the subject teachers constantly. Hence outside assessments is a necessity. Therefore, 2nd and 3rd term tests should be carried out by Zonal Offices with the help of Provincial offices while Education Ministry does the necessary constant monitoring.

The writer is the Ceylon Teachers’ Union Secretary