Double capacity in schools

By Dr.Ranjan MADANAYAKE

We all know that every school is an expense to the Government under our unique free education system.

We also know that education is an investment. Notwithstanding, accepting the fact it is an expense we need to find a way of making it more productive and thus less costly. My hypothesis is that we can use both infrastructure and teachers in a more productive manner and thus cut down costs.

Optimising infrastructure

Make all schools have two sessions for two different sets of students, the morning batch of students and afternoon batch of students as follows:

* 7.30 am to 11.50 am - 4 hours per day (2 breaks) morning batch

* 12.30 am to 4.50 pm - 4 hours per day (2 breaks) afternoon batch By doing so we will be able to double the capacity of intake of each school.

If we are having 100,000 schools for example and if it is adequate we can then reduce the number of schools by almost 50 percent. This will be a phenomenal saving to the Government. Currently we have eight periods, each of 40 minutes duration per day. The following shows the timing based on this proposition where we will have 6 periods with two 10 minute breaks and finish before 5.00 pm.

MORNING SESSION AFTERNOON SESSION

7.30 to 8.10 1st Period 12.30 to 1.10 1st Period

8.10 to 8.50 2nd Period 1.10 to 1.50 2nd Period

Break

9.00 to 9.40 3rd Period 2.00 to 2.40 3rd Period

9.40 to 10.20 4th Period 2.40 to 3.20 4th Period

Break

10.30 to 11.10 5th Period 3.30 to 4.10 5th Period

11.10 to 11.50 6th Period 4.10 to 4.50 6th Period

In order to catch up on the two periods lost it is recommended that we streamline the holidays. Accordingly school holidays must be limited to 3 weeks at a time. April including National New Year holidays, August and December including Christmas holidays.

This will give adequate time to students to complete their syllabi.

All exams must be held during this break and marking of papers be done in centres like BMICH and Convention Centre, than doing so in schools and closing the schools for paper marking and inundating the children.

Optimising teaching staff

The above table provides for six subjects to be taught each day. Subjects 1, 2 and 3 taught in the morning session from 7.30 am to 9.40 am will be taught to the students of the afternoon session from 12.30 pm to 2.40 pm. Therefore the same set of teachers can be used for both sessions. Hence these teachers can work from 7.30 am to 2.40 pm.

Similarly the subjects 4, 5 and 6 that start at 9.40 am go on till 11.50 in the morning session and the afternoon session commences at 2.40 pm and goes on till 4.50 pm.

Here too the same set of teachers can handle subjects of both sessions and they can work from 9.40 am to 4.50 pm. By having a roster system where teachers come in as per their subjects we can reduce the number of teachers bringing in a very large saving to the Government.

The benefits

With the above we may be able to solve the demand for Colombo / City schools, as their capacity will be doubled. For example Royal can have 15,000 if their present capacity is 7,500 so will Ananda, Visakha and the like. Parents will be delighted as they will have a better chance of getting a school of their choice for their children.The afternoon batch can be from students residing within a two mile radius whilst those outside say 4+ miles radius can be in the morning batch.

This pragmatic approach can reduce lots of Government expenditure. This will also mean that smaller schools can be closed down as the bigger ones that children would like to go to will have more capacity to absorb them.

To say no is easy, but to find solutions to saving Government and taxpayers' money isn't easy.

We need to try this out in about 5 differently located schools and ascertain the outcome.

If found to be feasible it must be extended island wide.

There are many small schools that are very low in standards and with several other problems, such as lack of facilities and teachers, which can be closed with the development of this concept. The savings can also be used to develop the schools in remote rural areas.