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The term ‘digital divide’ emerged in the 1990s in the US to describe regional and class-based inequities in access to information technology (ICT) resources and later came to signify such inequities on a global scale. Such inequities range from access to devices, access to the internet, the speed and quality of internet access and the uneven spread of what is called ‘digital literacy’ – or the ability to use ICTs. During the COVID-19 pandemic and physical closure of schools and universities we witnessed the stark realities of this divide within Sri Lanka and how it amplified pre-existing inequities in the country’s education system.

The National Education Policy Framework, (NEPF) the latest in a series of misdirected government interventions to reform education, has by now been roundly critiqued and hopefully no longer relevant. (For a critique of NEPF in this column see Ramya Kumar’s Kuppi of March 19 2024). The Parliament’s Sectoral Oversight Committee on Education (SOCE) has made useful observations on the language with which the policy is framed and expressed a lack of agreement on many of its recommendations.

Having been raised and schooled in Kandy, I have watched the festivities of the Esala Perahera at least 10 times, as a child, and drawn it at least five times during my school years. August was the best month for schools in Kandy Lake Round. We used to get a long school vacation as schools closed to house the forces providing security to the Esala Perahera. Ice cream carts, cotton candy vendors, popcorn, isso-wadai, balloon animals, sadda-nalaa [whistles for the lack of an English equivalent], glowsticks; August was carnivalesque for my childhood self. Growing up, I saw it more as a circus. Why do crowds raise their arms with “saadu saadu”? Why are elephants in this procession? Why do new mothers take their children under the belly of elephants for good luck? Do elephants have healing powers? Are they divine? Why are they chained then? Are they beastly?

Earlier this month the Cabinet approved a proposal presented by the President (as Minister of Defence) to admit fee-levying local students to the medical faculty of the Kotelawala Defence University (KDU). Thereafter, the KDU posted a call for applications from local students (‘day scholars’) to its MBBS programme with a May 5th, 2024, deadline—barely two weeks after the call appeared on the KDU website.

Once education is ‘dumbed down’ thus, reduced to a process of acquiring a qualification and a set of competencies as evidence of such, there is an easy case for the dismantling of the public university system: “if what you do can just as well be done using less space, less time, less trained teachers, and even online, what is the justification for allocating all these physical resources and the money that goes into sustaining them?”

English language teaching (ELT) has been a topic of national significance in the country for the past several decades, particularly since the introduction of the Open Economy in the late ’70s. Improving English education has been seen as an urgent and timely need that is directly linked to the economic development of the country, in the broader context of globalization. Despite the importance attributed to the topic, there is general consensus that English language education in Sri Lanka has largely been a failure.