Educational System of Sri Lanka and steps taken to strengthen the system – Review

 

Educational System of Sri Lanka and steps taken to strengthen the system – Review

 ‘Every child has the right to learn’ is the major concept of the program under UNICEF education. Education is vital to the lives of children and their proper behaviors. The education system of Asian countries is not much well-established in comparison to the Western and European countries. According to the world bank (2020), Sri Lankan education system is one of the leading education systems among South Asian countries while having a 91.71 percent adult literacy rate in 2018. Since the South Asian average literacy rate is 72.24 percent, it proves that Sri Lanka is in a better position than the other countries in the South Asia Region. To achieve this goal, Many steps taken by responsible body of education last fifty years. This article reviews these steps based on some important milestone.

There are four major stages named pre-school, general education, vocational and technical education, and tertiary education and training in the present education system in Sri Lanka. Most of the pre-schools for children between the ages of 3 – 5 are handled by the private sector. Primary grades from grade 1 to 5, junior secondary grades from grade 6 to 9 and senior secondary grades from grade 10 to 13 belong to the general education stage. Furthermore, there are more than four million school children, while about ten thousand schools have around a quarter-million government school teachers in Sri Lanka. (Perera & Hettiarachchi, 2014).

Free primary and secondary education and equal access to quality pre-primary education are two targets of quality education and it is successfully maintain in Sri Lanka.  There were a 91.1% primary (grade 1-5) net enrolment ratio and 50.8% male and 49.2% female of grade 1 admission is in 2019. So, all girls and boys have equality chance of having education. There is a scholarship examination in grade 5, those who are pass the examination can enter to an urban area school and poor students are eligible to a scholarship. From the scholarship students get some amount of money to their studying period to overcome financial struggle due to low income of their family, this fund is issued by government.  

Secondary education is divided in to junior secondary (grade 6-9), senior secondary (grade 10, 11) and collegiate (GCE A/L) levels. In grade 11 students have to face GCE (O/L) examination and those who are passed examination in first language, mathematics and four other subjects with three credit passes are eligible to enter collegiate level. Before 2017, students those who not pass the O/L examination are dropped from schools. But, in 2017 government introduced a national program called “Guaranteed Thirteen Years of Education for All” by adding a new subject stream (vocational stream) to A/L to develop vocational skills and protect the right to education to all and it reduces the percentage of annual dropout students ratio in the country. Now GCE A/L is implemented under six streams (Art, Commerce, Physical science, Biological science, Technology and Vocational).

There are sixteen government universities under the UGC. In 2019, 62.4% are eligible for university admission among students sat on A/L exam in 2018. But admission to government universities as a percentage of eligible is 22.5%. There are some professional undergraduate courses such as medicine, engineering, nursing, law, pharmacist, architecture, fashion design, quantity survey and accounting. But most of the courses do not have professional or vocational direction; especially in art stream. Most of the courses want to modify to fulfil the labor market opportunities. There are two scholarship schemes for poor students in universities, “Mahapola” and bursary from university. Also, government implement a laptop loan scheme since 2017, it is a great opportunity for needy students. Other than universities there are few government institutes to award diploma programs those who are not admission to government universities, STIATE, National College of Education, and College of Nursing. These institutes offer professional diploma programs. Moreover there are private universities, Kothalawala Defence University, Ocean University, Aquinas College, Vocational Technology University under the UGC to fulfil the higher educational needs of young generation and Open University is the only institute which offers distance education in Sri Lanka.

Firstly Hon. Dr. C. W. W. Kannangara introduced free education for all Sri Lankan students without any restrictions and the right to education is fixed in the state in 1945. After that Sri Lanka government ensure free education from kindergarten to university level and it is compulsory to study in a school for all the children in the age of 5- 16 years old.  Since 1980, text books and since 1993, school uniforms are free for all students. In 2017, government introduced “Suraksha” insurance scheme for all Sri Lankan students in the age between 5- 21 years registered in government schools, private schools with government aid or not, Pirivenas, semi government schools and international schools under the theme of “Protected Forever – The Children of the Nation”. Also, government allocate 1.9% of GDP as the government expenditure on education. Moreover, education implement to fulfill eight nation goals and seven national skills.

“School Nutrition Program” which is implemented directly by the Ministry of Education namely “The Government program” to provide meals to the school children, “Food for Education Program” jointly implemented by the Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs and World Food Program,  to provide a glass of fresh milk/ milk packets as an additional nutritional supplement. Under this program all the students of schools with total number of students less than 100, Students from Grade 1- 5 of selected schools, Students of special education unit are benefited.

There is an index namely School Education Quality Index (SEQI) to ensuring the quality in education since 2008. This is functioning on school, divisional, zonal, provincial and national levels under eight domains (General Management, Management of physical and human resources, Systematic curriculum Management and evaluation at class level, Management of Co-curricular activities, Student Achievement, Student welfare, School and Community, Development of students towards a knowledge based society). Annually schools are responsible to evaluate themselves according to the manual of SEQI.

Nowadays, local curricula introduce a large number of practical activities to the students in the lower grades. In the evaluation process, some percentage from the final marks will be allocated to those activities. Most of the schools add some marks for participating in sports activities in the end-term evaluation. The rigid curriculum changed as flexible, now students have choice to select subjects their own willingness in senior secondary. Some subjects are categorized as basket subjects thereby rigidity of curriculum is flexible.  New competency-based curriculum was introduced in 2007 and the main aim of this implementation was to eliminate previous transmission methods of teaching and to assign a transformational role to the teacher. Activity-based learning introduced in primary education and teacher centered method to teaching changed as student-centered learning method. by this method intentions, interest needs of students are prioritized during teaching learning process.

Teacher professional development is the key of the developing students’ quality of the outcomes in the 21st century. The Ministry of Education gradually changes the education policy according to professional ideas. As the teacher leads the prominent role in the education system, teacher qualification is essential for quality education as same as the students' attention. The government school teachers do not have any bar exams, but they have to complete their modular examinations according to the respective grade they teach. Apart from that, teachers should participate in more training programs concerning the subjects that they teach. It will develop the subject knowledge, new technology and confidence in teaching for making a friendly environment in the classroom with active learning in students.

Finally, government steps taken to improve good educational standards of citizen in Sri Lanka are described, These steps improved the literacy of people and are increased good health life compared than other Asian countries. So educational system of Sri Lanka is updated day to day to face coming challenges in the world of 21st century.

References

Perera, K., & Hettiarachchi, S. (2014). Study on quality assurance and accreditation in general education in Sri Lanka. National Education Commission.

Ministry of Education 2020, Manual on school nutrition programme, https://moe.gov.lk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Manual-on-School-Nutrition-Program.p

Statistical Branch of Ministry of Education of Sri Lanka 2019, Annual school census of Sri Lanka,  http://www.statistics.gov.lk/Education/StaticalInformation/SchoolCensus/2019

The word bank. (2020). Literacy rate, adult total https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS?locations=LK

 D’Souza, J 2017, ‘Education in Sri Lanka’, https://wenr.wes.org/2017/08/education-insri-lanka