Teacher service and teaching quality

G D Dahanayake

Today it is an established fact that the teachers are the founders and bearers of the education system. At earlier times teachers were honoured and respected as God in many parts of the civilized world

The importance of the teaching profession has been pronounced many more times by world famous leaders and philosophers such as Mahathma Gandhi, Plato, and Aristotle. According to them they were the generators of the future society. Creators of the new world.

‘It should be recognised that the advance in education depends largely on the qualifications and the ability of the teaching staff,’ says the Charter of Status of Teachers adopted by the World Educationist and Ministers of Education Conference in Paris on October 6, 1966.

“The effectiveness of schools depends on the quality of the teachers more than any other factor,” says the recent report of the proposals to the New Education Act for General Education in Sri Lanka prepared by the National Education Commission.

However before January 1, 1995 the status of teachers in Sri Lanka was miserable from the beginning. Even after the establishment of unified administration for education system in the country in 1961, there was no proper procedure of recruitment to the teacher service. From time to time individuals were admitted as teachers under different schemes and different salary scales. Until 1985 there were nearly 50 categories and salary scales for teachers. Political appointments were inevitable and well-known.

Development opportunities

Until the 1970s most of the teachers in the system were untrained. There were no sufficient training or professional development opportunities to them. The number of Teacher Training Colleges were not enough to cope with the training requirements. Graduate teachers had to wait five years to sit for the competitive entrance exam to enter into university for postgraduate diploma course.

There was no proper placement or transfer policy or procedure for teachers until 1996. They were appointed and transferred to schools at the mercy of the authorities. Favourite privileges were in better schools forever while most others suffered in remote difficult areas. After each election political transfers were dominating. Husbands were transferred to Jaffna, Mannar, Ampara while wives were transferred to Hambantota, Badulla, Hanguranketha.

However, it must be mentioned here as a honour and respect to former Education Minister Richard Pathirana in 1996 was able to prepare a policy paper on teacher transfers with the guidance and participation of teacher trade unions and implement it establishing Teacher Transfer Boards at the Ministry as well as at the Provincial and Zonal Education Offices.

There was no proper promotion scheme. The opportunities for promotions were not sufficient to fulfill requirements of the service. In other services the ratio of promotions to the cadre were 1:3, 1:5, 1:7 while it was 1:35 for teachers. Promotions were limited to around thousands of vacancies in the Principals Service and a few hundreds of vacancies in the Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service.

At the same time some promotions to the Principals Service were no promotions for some teachers because of their higher salaries. Sometimes promotions were given to political favourites without any reasonable procedure. As a result of this most of the teachers who entered the service as an assistant teacher with many more qualifications and experience were compelled to retire as an assistant teacher after 30 or 40 years of service.

Teacher transfers

These conditions and status further aggravated soon after the 1977 elections. About 22,000 teacher transfers were made during the following two years as political punishment. Some teachers, principals, officers were forced to leave duty stations and political stooges were appointed to such offices. In the meantime several attempts were made to destroy the democratic education. The result was an unprecedented crisis in the system.

Finally the sad and bad story of the teachers’ salaries. Over several decades the salaries of the teachers were not sufficiently revised. There were more than 50 categories of teacher salary scales. But no one got a sufficient salary for a decent living. No Salary Commission was appointed to review Government service salary scales considered sufficiently above the status of teacher salaries. One commission in its report suggested about their inability and necessity of appointing a special committee for revision of teacher salaries. According to the report of the Central Bank in 1987, it was the teachers who had the minimum rate of salary increase among the Government employees at that time.

Due to the longstanding struggle of the teachers’ unions movement, the Government had to appoint the Dayaratne Committee to review the salaries of the teachers and principals in 1982. The committee was in favour of the proposals submitted to it by the Joint Teachers Union Federation. The committee admitted that the salaries to the teachers and principals were not sufficient. They accepted the absence of a sufficient and proper promotion scheme was a grave obstacle and demoralising factor to the professional development and to the educational performance. They proposed a unified salary system with substantial increase and a master teacher plan to organize a promotion scheme. They felt the urgent need for making provisions for promotions and strongly advised to make 30,000 promotions immediately. This was the first and only committee appointed to review the teachers, principals salaries specifically and that was a turning point.

Education Ministry

This was the story behind the implementation of the Teacher Service Minutes. Therefore it is not an ad hoc change as some conservative archaic bureaucratic gentlemen say. The report of the Dayaratne Committee was not published. But government implemented some of its proposals. The Education Ministry prepared a draft of teacher service minutes during the tenure of Education Minister Lalith Athulathmudali. Then there was a draft prepared by then Director General Rupasinghe. The Education Commission headed by Professor Luxman Jayatilake published another draft. In order to discuss these drafts all trade unions affiliated to the Education Ministry were invited to the Ministry in May 1990. At that meeting, all trade unions unanimously decided to deliberate matter jointly in the Ministry and to draft it newly while rejecting all other drafts. So the following three years were spent for the deliberations, preparation and approval by the participants. For this in addition to trade union leaders, representatives of the Education State Administration Ministries and the Treasury participated.

In 1993 when W J M Lokubandara was the Education Minister it was submitted to the Cabinet and approved as a policy matter. In the 1994 election, it was included in the election manifestos of both the UNP and SLFP. In October 1994, it was approved by the Cabinet and implemented on January 1, 1995 and the gratitude all concerned must go to the then Education Minister Richard Pathirana for his untiring efforts in this connection.

The aims and objectives of the Teacher Service Minutes were not limited to the salary increase only. Its main objective was to find a solution to the education system crisis. The main problems were the quality of the teaching administration and discipline. A reorganization of teacher service was necessary. Therefore, the following requirements were expected to be fulfilled.

* To lay down and implement a proper recruitment policy and procedure.

* By year 2000 all teachers in the service should be trained graduates.

* Regular in-service training and proper evaluation of performance.

* Attractive promotion scheme with higher salaries.

* To keep the best teachers in the classroom/in the school even after promotions in order to get their service continuously.

After all it exemplified the need of the well developed highly qualitative, efficient, effective, creative teacher service. In the following two years the teachers were very enthusiastic and the standards of performance were improving to unprecedented levels. The index of literacy level risen to 90 percent.

Administrative Services

However in 1997 the B C Perera Commission which was appointed to review the salaries of the Government sector looked into this matter in a different angle. They saw it as an ad hoc change. They failed to understand that there was a necessity to establish a separate teacher service not coming under any other service.

They firmly believed that the abilities, practice and experience of Administrative Services were unparalleled concerning teachers and principals. Therefore the services of teachers and principals have to come under the Administrative Service. The conservative bureaucratic thinking of these gentlemen prevented them realizing that teachers and principals are professionals as doctors, proctors, engineers unlike administrators.

They deformed the teacher service minutes disregarding the noble aims and objectives enshrined in it. They increased the salaries of other sectors except teachers and principals and said that they will review those salaries later. But it has not been done up to date. From then teachers were waiting very patiently. Now it is high time to correct this before the unrest and dissatisfaction among the teachers grows.

As teachers and principals are professionals they should have the academic freedom to perform their duties without any political or administrative harassing. In order to create this environment the Teachers Council and Principals Council should be established. Let them decide their duties, responsibilities, discipline, performance evaluation and other academic matters.

The writer is the President, Sri Lanka Jathika Guru Sangamaya