Innovations to ensure accountability in education

Prof Rajiva WIJESINHA, MP

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP

I have not written much about education recently because much else seemed more important, indeed urgent. However recent visits to several rural areas, and interactions with students and other stakeholders in schools and elsewhere, have made me realize how woeful our situation is. Many schools are without Principals, including, astonishingly, two National Schools in the Beliatta area. One of these has suffered a severe loss of students in recent years, which leads to an even greater strain on more popular urban schools. Results for vital subjects for the modern world, Maths, Science and English, are abysmal in rural areas, not surprisingly because many schools in those areas are without teachers.

Parliamentary colleagues

Students rarely go to class when they reach the Advanced Level, because tuition seems more productive in terms of passing examinations. In the old days, many areas were neglected because Education Ministry had neither the inclination nor the resources to pay close attention to schools in distant places. It was assumed that devolution would help, but this has not happened, because the province too is far too large a unit to ensure monitoring of distant schools. What then is the answer? My own view is that responsibility should be allocated to even smaller units, ideally the Education Zonal or even Divisional office.

Discussing this with Parliamentary colleagues however, I was told that giving authority to such small units could lead to abuse. It was pointed out that such units would not have the capacity to resolve problems. At the same time it was recognized that better supervision was needed, with closer awareness of actual problems on the ground.

One obvious measure to take is to ensure that accountability is to stakeholders rather than to distant bureaucrats. It would be simple to set up School Advisory Boards, not for single schools, because that would lead to excessive interference, but for particular areas. The ideal catchment area for this, I would suggest, is the Pradeshiya Sabha, with all members asked to exercise a monitoring brief on all the schools in the area. Members of Parliament, who now have to appeal either to Education Minister or to the Provincial Education Minister when they want problems resolved, could also be members of the Board. Such a Board would thus advocate more effectively, with greater focus and assessments based on a wider context than just sudden needs that are brought to the attention of political stakeholders.

Training programmes

At the same time the Board should not consist only of politicians. It should include retired educationists, Principals who have performed good service and teachers who have produced good results in key subjects. It should also include representatives of professions that are relevant to education and child development, doctors and those involved in vocational and sports and cultural training programmes.

Local system

The Advisory Board should have very clear responsibilities. First and foremost, it should monitor staffing in schools. It could, as a corollary of this, recommend from a local and knowledgeable standpoint schools that might be amalgamated to promote educational productivity. While obviously students should not have to travel too far, it makes no sense to continue with a couple of schools less than ten miles apart having just a few students in each class, with constant shortages of teachers. Secondly, it should monitor educational achievement, obviously through comparative assessment of examination results, but also by sharing information about coverage of syllabuses, need for tuition etc in schools in the same catchment area. It should also check on extra-curricular activities, and the ability of Principals to lead. Awareness of best practice in the area will help Principals to try to build up teams of teachers functioning cohesively to ensure the rounded development of their charges.

Infrastructure facilities needed for rural schools. File photo

Thirdly, it should also promote planning for appropriate employment for the products of the local system. Advocating for suitable vocational training for the area, developing entrepreneurship amongst the young, promoting cooperative mechanisms with regard to agri-business or cottage industries, are all areas in which local School Advisory Boards could contribute. They should aim to encourage better preparation for the world of work for students in an area with adequate critical mass as it were, but small enough to ensure individual attention. Some of this coordination is envisaged in one of the best ideas to come out of the Education Ministry in recent years, the development of centres of excellence throughout the country. Leaving supervision of these only to the ministry however may well lead to neglect of the other schools in the area.

Practical suggestions

A Board that includes stakeholders with interest in all schools in the area will be able to advocate for equitable development, and ensure that all schools and thus all students will get the attention they deserve.

Such coordination is particularly important in areas in which children of different ethnic groups are kept segregated, with Sinhala schools and Tamil schools and also separate Muslim schools that have no obligation to work together. Of course in some places there is good cooperation already, but this should exist everywhere as a matter of principle, with stakeholders representing the different groups working together to promote education in the area as a whole.

Coordination could also contribute to a better use of resources, with sharing of playgrounds, halls, sports and musical equipment and even trainers. It could also lead to joint cultural events and exhibitions, joint fund-raising programmes, joint educational excursions.

I am aware that ideas such as the above will not appeal to bureaucrats who tend to guard jealously their authority. But education is an area in which, while authority may need to be exercised by detached administrators, awareness of the ground situation is an absolute necessity.

A conduit that can collect and collate and transmit education can only be a positive force, and I hope this sort of system can be considered and implemented soon. It can do no harm, it will channel the energies of concerned Pradeshiya Sabha members in the right direction, it will provide benchmarks to judge their performance as well as the performance of the institutes under their purview. But I suspect a system that does not take kindly to new ideas will not be able to take such practical suggestions forward.