De-politicise universities – Tara

While Sri Lanka is reputed to have a good education system in the context of the rest of South Asia, it also has many gaps, asserts former Education Secretary Dr. Tara de Mel.

She was Education Secretary during 2000-2001 and once again in 2004-2005, after which there was a change in the administration. Dr. De Mel wasinstrumental in introducing key changes to the school education system including curricula reform, modernising text books and reforming the examination methods. In the course of a wide-ranging interview with The Bottom Line, Dr. De Mel, who is now a consultant on education and other related matters, spoke about the main challenges faced by the education system, including the low participation in tertiary education, low expenditure on education, curricula reform, interference in the Grade 1 admission procedure, lack of IT exposure and the need to de-politicise student movements in universities. Following are excerpts

Q: What are the main challenges that the present school education system is facing?

A: I think the main challenges can be described under several categories. Sri Lanka is reputed to have a good education system in the context of the rest of South Asia, mainly in terms of literacy, primary enrolment and gender parity. Because of these, we are lauded as having a good system, but I see a bigger picture in that our secondary education system has many gaps, where we are facing many problems, as well as in tertiary education.

If you look at the secondary education system, we have very low pass rates. In one of the most important public examinations, that is the Ordinary Level (O/L) examination, our pass rate is something between 45% and 47%. We also have very low pass rates in key competitive subjects. Other countries look at high pass rates in subjects like mathematics, science and Information Technology for example, but we have very low pass rates in these subjects.

For instance, at the December 2006 O/L examination, the mathematics pass rate was 42.6%, the science pass rate was 48.3% and the English pass rate was only 38.8%. The overall O/L pass rate was just 47%.

We also have very poor exposure to IT while the rest of our neighbours in South Asia, and obviously in South East Asia, have very good exposure to IT. Again, I can quote from the most recent survey done by the Census Department. For 137 students island-wide, there is only one PC. If you look at teachers, for every 100 teachers, there are only 15 PCs. These are the national statistics. In some schools, for example in the Colombo, Kandy and Kurunegala Districts, there is a very good ratio, but they are few and far between. Those are two of the major issues in relation to secondary education.

If you look once again at science education, which is very critical, and take the Advanced Level (A/L), out of 2,500 schools offering the A/L, only 525 have classes which offer science subjects. Nearly 2,000 schools don’t offer science subjects. As a result, the bulk of students naturally go in for the arts and commerce-based streams.

As a result of this you find very few students coming for science degrees even in the universities, whereas if you look at countries like Singapore and Malaysia, it’s the other way around. They have realised that their economic growth has always been as a result of growth in disciplines in subjects connected to science, mathematics and IT. As a result of that, they have invested in their secondary school science and mathematics education.

That is a gap that I see. It’s a very important problem that we have been trying to address and it needs to be addressed.

Then if you look at participation in tertiary education, which is internationally known as the APR – the Age-specific Participation Rate, we have an average of less then 3%. Most developed countries have a rate of 30%-40% and other countries, particularly in South East Asia, have a rate of 10%-15%. Sri Lanka has the lowest APR in South Asia. That is another serious drawback.

The other drawback that I see is the expenditure on education. This has been a problem for several decades. In South Asia, Sri Lanka is one of the lowest spenders on education. We have spent, for the last so many years, something between 2% and 3% of GDP on education. Internationally, the recommended level is something between 4%-5.5%.

If you look at the expenditure from the government budget, our expenditure on education has always been something around 7%-9%. The recommended amount is 13%-14%. We spend very little on education. In South Asia, if you look at the per capita expenditure, we have the lowest rate for education, whereas we have the highest for defence. As a proportion of GDP, Sri Lanka has the lowest expenditure on education and the highest on defence.

If you look at teacher salaries, once again Sri Lanka has one of the lowest per capita teacher salaries in South Asia as well as South East Asia.

These are some critical issues that we sometimes tend to ignore or neglect when we talk about our high primary enrolment or high literacy rate, or lack of gender disparity. All those are true but these things that I spoke of are directly responsible for that transformation or contribution to economic growth. Those are the main problems as I see them.

Q: You took steps to introduce several key changes to the school education system including curricula reform, modernising text books and reforming the examination methods. What came about these reforms?

A: I can give you some highlights of the developments. For example, the primary education reforms, most of them were accepted a lot by the teachers as well as the students. It was an activity-based curriculum, with a lot of projects involved.

I don’t know exactly to what degree this is being maintained now because teachers need to be constantly trained and retrained and more than that, the schools have to be monitored. No reform will get rooted successfully unless it is continuously monitored and improved. There has to be a quality check. I wouldn’t know to what extent that is happening now.

If you look at some of the other key reforms that we introduced, in 2004 we proposed significant reform of the secondary curriculum, whereby we wanted to introduce English medium education on a broader scale for the higher grades.

Another of the key reforms was to reintroduce chemistry, physics and biology into the O/L, which we had in the 1970s. We wanted to reintroduce those subjects and allow the students the option of doing it in the English medium.

This was together with a series of new reforms in the curriculum based on new developments in countries like Malaysia and Singapore. We based our package on those newer developments, and of course, introducing IT as a learning tool as well as a separate subject.

Those were reforms that were not actually implemented. I don’t know why this was. They were posted on the website and announced to the public in September 2005. They were officially launched and we had also invited book publishers by then to prepare the books and teaching material based on the new syllabus. Nothing came of it. Then I resigned from office and there was a change in the administration.

About the books, there is a system called the multiple book option, which is nothing new. Sri Lanka has had the multiple book option for years and then we changed that system for some unknown reason. With this system, according to the syllabus recommended by the government or the Education Ministry, reputed international and local publishers are asked to print books and teaching material.

With the multiple book option, the main difference is that from the books that are given to the student free, instead of prescribing just one book, we allow the teacher or the principal to choose. They were allowed to choose maybe three books out of the range given to them and if they choose one of those three, the others were going to be available in the library. That was a serious change, a landmark decision.

We started the project in 2001. Of course, it took a year or two to gather momentum. However, by the time I left, the multiple book option was in full swing and many of the well-known publishers like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and other internationally known publishers, including many Indian publishers, joined the local book industry.

It was a sea change that was happening in terms of the quality of the books. Until then, the syllabuses and the books were written by the same people, so we wanted to make that change. Unfortunately, the multiple book option ceased to operate from 2006. Once again we have reverted to the old scheme where the books are written and published by the National Institute of Education and the Education Publications Department.

If you look at the examination reforms, the three examinations were concentrated on were the Grade 5 scholarship examination, the O/L and the A/L. What we were trying to do was make the emphasis on factual recall and memory as less as possible and bring in a lot of testing of analytical skills, the ability to analyse, apply your knowledge and make you think and be critical.

In the case of the Grade 5 examination, we made a special attempt to make the examination paper nice for a child. We wanted to make it very child-friendly and as simple as possible, and at the same time test the child’s basic intelligence and aptitude. Those changes were proposed.

The O/L papers were revised in such a way as to be comparable somewhat to the GSCE of the UK. At the A/L, I think a key reform was the introduction of a common general test, which was going to be mandatory for entry to the university. Of course there had to be improvements and the test paper had to be revised; we were doing pilots on that. To what degree those improvements are happening now, I am not aware.

In addition to these three examinations, we introduced a school-based assessment programme. This is done all over the world but we introduced it together with the reform package in 1999. What we were trying to do was introduce a continuous system of evaluating the student and the marks of those continuous evaluations were to come together ultimately with the GCE O/L.

The assessments were to be done in the school by the principal and teachers, together with the student. That was a very scientific method and we had learnt from the exercises that had been done in other countries as well. I don’t know to what degree the school-based assessment programme is now going on. That was a landmark change.

Then, of course, there was the revising of the examination timetable. When we had the O/L examination in December, until August the student could not start on the A/L and there were a lot of complaints about the children just being at home doing nothing much at that age. Also, the whole cycle got changed and pushed back.

What we did was make sure that the O/L results were made public by March so that the A/L classes could start either in April or latest in May and there would be no languishing at home. The other reason was that if the A/L examination was held in May every year, those who wanted to apply for foreign universities had that ability as well. Foreign universities open their applications around that time for September entry.

There were many reasons to change this timetable. Initially, there were a few hiccups with the Examinations Department but later on it was fine and from 2000 until 2006, we had this revised timetable going now. But that has also changed now.

Q: Was the ‘Navodya Project’ to upgrade rural schools a success?

A: It was definitely a success. It was started in the late 1990s. We identified one to two selected schools in every divisional secretariat division and the purpose there was to upgrade the schools with modern facilities like computer labs, science labs, and modern facilities and so on, so that the demand for children of those areas to come to the more popular cities would be lessened.

I am not sure what is happening with the project now but I remember that a lot of money out of the education budget was pumped into it.

We used to study the admission patterns in the particular divisional secretariat division and we found that when a ‘Navodya’ school was developing and doing well, the applications to that school immediately increased. That itself was a good reward for us. Eventually, the plan was to make it five schools per divisional secretariat division.

Q: How do you propose to strengthen the University Grants Commission (UGC)?

A: Well, the UGC came about as part of an Act. What needed to be done, or rather what was proposed at that time, was to make the UGC truly a grants commission that would make sure that grants were being used properly, among other things, and invite good private universities to establish branch, satellite or link campuses here.

Sri Lanka is among the one-fourth of countries in the world that do not formally encourage any private universities to cater to the needs of the large number of children who qualify for a university education.

In 2006, 119,555 students qualified to enter university but the 15 state-owned universities only had 17,287 places. The rationale for insisting on good quality private universities and degree awarding institutions to come and have a dialogue with the government is similar to what is happening in the health sector, with private hospitals. But nothing has come of this.

Q: What are your views on the ‘Tara-Harold Report’ issue?

A: There was no ‘Tara-Harold Report.’ The World Bank published a book on the education system of Sri Lanka at that time and Peter Harold presented a copy to me. This was termed the ‘Tara-Harold Report’ although there was no such thing.

Q: What are the steps that need to be taken to standardise local universities to bring them on par with internationally recognised universities in other countries?

A: There should be a quality assurance system with benchmarks in the case of research, governance, curricula, modular systems, etc. Some state universities are on a progressive step but much more could be done. They should become self-sufficient and generate their own income. De-politicisation is very important. Student movements are deeply politicised. As a result, teachers are disgruntled and look towards greener pastures.

Tara has her say on Grade 1 school admission

Q: During your tenure as Education Secretary, you highlighted the high degree of political interference into the Grade 1 school admission procedure. What can be done to rid the system of this problem?

A: Out of 238 national schools with primary classes, only about 50 to 60 are considered popular and prestigious national schools and therefore in high demand. The school admission policy at that time allowed only a certain number of students into a class and naturally the numbers were restricted. As a result, the number of applications was far higher than the number of places available.

Everybody was trying to get into these restricted places and it was very difficult for officials at the Education Ministry to be able to stick to the agreed policy. There is a circular that is sent to the schools every year which stipulates the criteria and sometimes it was difficult to abide by that circular because there was a lot of interference from all walks of life, from politicians to others, to violate the circular. The Secretary to the Education Ministry has to violate the very circular that he signed. Those are the main problems.

I can use this opportunity to tell you the changes we introduced to the schools admission policy. This was the problem for many years, where parents were disappointed because they can’t get their child into school and they use various influence and there is a lot of corruption.

In 2005, the Education Ministry, together with the National Education Commission at that time, debated this issue on several occasions and decided on a new system and process for school admissions. The circular itself, which is the criteria for admission, did not change drastically. The proportions of marks given for eligibility didn’t change much.

For instance, it is internationally known that a Grade 1 child who is just five years old should have a school that is closest to the child’s home. Ideally a child should be able to walk to school. Therefore, the allocation given to the ‘area rule’ as it were is the highest – 40% of the mark is given for the distance between the child’s home and the school.

Similarly, there are other criteria given. We didn’t adjust that because we though it was a very rational way of choosing but what we did do was make the entire admission process very transparent. Previously, parents sometimes didn’t know why their child was not selected and there were no reasons given. There was a lot of injustice and there were many accusations and allegations.

The new system that the Education Ministry designed in 2005 really had to do with a lot of transparency and was a fair as possible by the parents. Firstly, we decided to invite applications early from the public and the application form was also designed in such a way that it was easy to take the data out of the application form.

Through specially-designed computer software, these admission details were fed into the computer. The Ministry had designed a special software programme and a group of officials was trained for this. Different districts were taken separately and the applications were all fed into the computer in a coded form.

Through this computer software programme, the selection process was made easy. At every stage of the process we posted information on the website about the students who were selected on the temporary list or rejected. If they were rejected, the information stating why it was done was also given on the website.

There was no way that a parent could not know what had happened. Also, there was no way for another student to be allowed to creep in because every bit of information was posted on the website and the people were aware of it.

As for starting the process early, in 2005 we started calling for applications on March 15. That was very early. The circular was sent out to schools and the newspaper published the applications forms. By April 30, the applications had all closed. That was one of the quickest programmes that we implemented at that time.

Meanwhile, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who was also the Education Minister at the time, informed all the cabinet members, governments MPs and provincial politicians not to interfere in any way with the ongoing process at the Ministry. She also informed all the national school principals to extend their fullest cooperation.

One of the problems of the earlier system was that the entire burden was on the shoulders of the school principals. The principals had to spend the bulk of their time processing the applications and calling for interviews. There was no time at all for a school principal to participate in academic activities. There was an appeal made by the National Schools Principals’ Association to the President to relieve them from this process. That was another reason why the Ministry took it on to develop the new system.

Anyway, by March 15 we started calling for applications, by April 30 the applications were closed and from August, the temporary list of selected candidates for different schools were being published on the website together with information about those who were rejected and why.

Something else that was very important that we initiated was where we double-checked firstly the copy of the deed of the child’s house that was sent to the Ministry. That was checked with the Lands Registry. Also, the distance that the application forms stated was also double-checked, first with the surveyor general’s maps and further double-checked with the Postal Department.

We had a very coordinated approach and the ‘area rule’ that the parent gave in the application form was always double-checked. This whole rush was only for about 50 to 60 schools so it was not a big thing to check.

Having done all of that, the final completed list of all the selected students was published on the website on November 1, 2005. The schools were also informed. By November 2 everybody knew who was selected to what school and those who were rejected were also informed. We had also opened up another channel through an appeals commissioner for them to ask what went wrong and for them to lodge any appeals.

Unfortunately, that was the end of the story because by the time the list was posted on the website, the presidential election was also just around the corner and the system was not implemented in 2006 – although we went through the entire process. It was a pointless exercise in a sense, it was a sad thing. But if you look at the scientific process with which we went into it, it was a shame that it was abandoned.