Rajapaksa’s Cynicism On Education
Mangala Samaraweera MP
By Mangala Samaraweera -
August 22, 2012 |
Since 1945 when education in our country was made a free service Sri Lanka was able to to proudly proclaim that it had one of the finest education systems East of theSuez canal. As a result , we posses one of the highest literary rates in Asia and many of the brightest and the best who have served our country in various fields have been products of this system – the envy of many Soth Asian countries. Within this, our universities provided the highest levels of education to its graduates. Even today, many of those who hold top positions in state sector as well as the private sector are products of this system. That is why all governments since indepedence gave the utmost priority to protecting and nuturing our eduction system but unfortunately since 2005 the priority given education has rapidly dwindled.
Since 2005, the government spending on education has been slashed from 2.9% of GDP to a shocking 1.9%. Even our neighbours who used to look up to our education system as a role model are investing more in Education.
The Maldives (many of its leaders were educated in Sri Lanka) is spending 8.7% of GDP on Education.
Nepal 4.7%
India 3.2%
Pakistan 2.9%
Bangladesh 2.4%
As a matter of interest, even Sub Saharan Arica spends 4.7% on education.
The cynical attitude the Rajapakse regime has towards education and the educated is further highlighted by the fact that the government spending for universities was slashed to 0.27% in 2010. Because of the low salaries, some of the best lecturers are compelled to seek greener pastures while the others who continue to serve in their motherland are labelled as thugs or terrorists by this government.
The Rajapakse regime, instead of coming to grips with the calamitous situation in The Education sector today, is busy trying to find scapegoats to justify its own inefficiency while trying to cover up its own secret plan to destroy the free education system as we know it. Like most authoritarian regimes, the Rajapake regime is wary of educated persons and the intelligentsia who are seen as an obstacle to their agenda.
If you look at the type of persons who are running this regime, it is obvious that what is appreciated is Brawn and not brains.
Even in the Z score fiasco, various scapegoats have been put forward to justify this shocking tragedy where over 6500 A Level students have had their hopes shattered due to the sheer incompetence of the executive. Some blame the Ministers, Ministers blame the bureaucrats and the bureaucrats blame the Z score system while the real culprit is sitting tight passing the buck as he usually does.
The Z score system was introduced in 2000 and since 2001 this system was used for nearly 10 years without a problem.
Using the aggregate of raw marks for university admission was an unreliable and obsolete method (discarded by most countries) and was proving to be a grave injustice to students.
The Presidential Task Force on General and University Education of 1998 proposed as one of its recommendations;
Read More‘Allowing students to take three subjects instead of four, introducing General English and the common general paper as mandatory, bringing forward the exam from April to August, that the A level not be the sole criteria for university admission and to broaden criteria as done in the UK.’
