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| Sunday, 17 July 2005 |
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Lanka's educational system should be development oriented by Elmo Leonard Sri Lanka's educational and vocational training systems could be structured to meet global and domestic demands, eliminating unemployment and solving many of the ills the nation faces, including militancy. There should also be preference to teaching in English, marine engineer, Ananda Ponnamperuma said. Ponnamperuma worked for some of the best known shipping companies in the world and lived in the five continents. Now retired, and back in Sri Lanka, Ponnamperuma made use of his academic and working experience at home and abroad, to comment on Sri Lanka's educational system. While nations such as UK, USA, India and Pakistan, mass produce their people passing out of university and vocational training centres, Sri Lanka limits such numbers. Around 95 per cent of professionals such as doctors, engineers accountants, technicians and other skilled hands, working in the Middle East comprise Indians and Pakistanis because the educational systems of these nations are geared to meet global demand. But, Sri Lankans sit pretty, boasting about how many housemaids and domestic aids are employed abroad and how much remittances are received on account of it. The standards of Sri Lanka's MBBS qualified, chartered accountants, engineers and the like are of a much higher standard than their counterparts in the developed and developing world, Ponnamperuma said. Instead of limiting students entering universities, Sri Lanka should open more universities including private owned universities, with government clamping down a common standard and syllabus. University studies should also be diversified to meet global demands. Nowhere in the world are governments obliged to give employment to those passing out of universities, while in Sri Lanka, successive governments have been wary of opening more universities in the belief that they would have to provide jobs to graduates, passing out. If government, yet, wants to harbour such responsibility, they could give first preference to those passing out of state owned universities, Ponnamperuma said. The number of Sri Lankans passing out into the hospitality industry and
skilled labour such as electricians, masons, carpenters and the like are
hopelessly inadequate. More vocational training centres should be opened,
geared to meet the growing global demand. |
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