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| Sunday, 3 July 2005 |
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Developing quality education by Ranga Jayasuriya Sri Lanka needs to look beyond the universal access to primary education to the second and third generation of reforms of education to develop a quality education system, recommends a report while noting that the country has lost its initial lead in education due to the sluggish economic growth. The report, while identifying exceptional individual performances in the education system, notes, despite such "islands of excellence", the average level education quality and learning outcomes are considered unsatisfactory. The report released Thursday is the most comprehensive and scientific analysis of the education in the country ever undertaken by the World Bank. According to the report, in first language (Sinhalese and Tamils) average mastery is only 37%, writing (28%) and syntax (30%), comprehension (45%) and vocabulary skills is 70%. Only 10 per cent of children achieve the targeted level of mastery. Overall mastery of mathematics is only 38%. "The proportion of students passing the GCE O/L is low, only 37%, implying that about two out of every three students taking the examination fails," states the report. Pass rates at the GCE A/L examination has been around the 50-55 per cent. The report identifies, despite 97 per cent enrolment rate at Grade one and nearly all completing Grade 5, the country has not yet achieved universal compulsory education with 18 per cent of children failing to complete grade 9. "...an important equity issue exists is the 18% of children who fail to complete Grade 9 are drawn from poorer homes, economically disadvantaged geographical regions, conflict affected areas and the estate sector or are disabled and handicapped children," says the report titled Treasures of the Education System in Sri Lanka: Restoring performances, Expanding opportunities and Enhancing prospects. The report attributes the high unemployment rates of educated labour force to the sluggish economic growth. The report says the overall tertiary education enrolment rate is about 11 per cent of the eligible population, which is slightly above the South Asian average. The major proportion of tertiary enrolment, about 6 per cent is in courses outside the domestic university and formal technical education sector. The university enrolment is only 3 percent and advanced technical education enrolment is about 2 per cent. "Overall, tertiary education enrolment rates have expanded about 38 % over the period of 1997-2002," states the report. Government education expenditure at present amounts to about 40,000 million (USD 415 Million) annually or approximately 3% of the national income and 7%-9% of government spending. "This represents a comparatively modest level of public education investment by the developing country standards," it says. It also states that the public university education in Sri Lanka is expensive with high unit operating costs in comparison to the other developing countries. The average for student-non-academic staff ratio for the 12 public universities which offer on-site degree courses is only 4.1 and in terms of academic staff to non-academic staff, the ratio is 1:4. "This suggests a cost-inefficient system, with an unduly large proportion of resources devoted to non-academic staff salaries," states the report. The report points to the higher teacher absenteeism at the schools, adding that teachers take about 7 million days of legitimate leave per year. It also states that the status of the teachers, motivation and work attitudes have been deteriorating over the years, stressing the need for re-motivating the teachers. Teachers salaries have been declining in real terms over the past 25 years and Teachers in 2002 had earned only about 85 per cent of the salary in real terms that teachers received in 1978, according to the report. "Sri Lanka needs to look beyond universal access to primary education which it achieved many years ago, to second and third generation reforms to develop a quality education system" says Dr. Harsha Aturupane, Senior Economist, World Bank who is the main author of the report. "We need to shift the focus of the capital budget from classrooms,
administration buildings and staff-rooms which have been in the past focus,
to scientific laboratories,computer centres,libraries and activity rooms in
future. Similarly in the recurrent expenditure budget, free up resources
from the salaries bill for teaching learning material" he adds. |
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