By Sivamohan Sumathy
Free Education has been with us for more than 80 years now. It predates independence. One of its clearest objectives was to give the people, far and wide, an equitable chance. Given the fragile economy we have, first dependent on export crops and now, on exporting labour, through a volatile manufacturing sector, education is seen as the foremost avenue of social mobility across classes. And it is true. A centrally driven education system, at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, offered, and still offers, hope to thousands of working people in the country. It is part of a success story. The education sector has made great strides in branching out, establishing schools in remote areas. To those in the university system, the equalizing and larger democratic principle in action here is quite apparent. The District Quota system, expanding falteringly, to encompass students with disabilities and those with other special talents, has brought a large measure of diversity. Today we have a youthful educated population, where the bottom line is not even the O/Levels, but A/Levels. Yet, inequalities persist and persist in ways that they have brought about a crisis.
80 years on, access to equitable education is a hard fought race undertaken by the populace. Finding a “good” school, sometimes, even a school, for their school going age children is a nightmare for many, from the struggling urban middle class to the single mother in a remote village. The 15 kilometer radius rule does give some measure of equity to many, but in urban areas across the country, schools are divided along class lines, not to mention ethnicity/language and gender. The schools in remote areas are understaffed and generally under resourced.
Successive governments have tried to reform general education with new proposals, with proposals that would make it more accessible, less competitive and more empowering. However, the general education system itself has splintered between a state system and a smaller group of private schools that follow the state system and the international schools, that remain to date, fairly unregulated. English medium education in schools, offered largely in urban settings, and in schools catering to the middle class, has become popular. In an economy that is not thriving, many look outside, and where labour has become more and more an export commodity, the goals and parameters of education have somehow shifted. While the Kannangara Reforms were about empowering the population within the bourgeois class system we have come to operate in, the current goals of education are diversified and are underscored by class interests; apparent in the way students are channeled into academic, vocational and labour streams. These ends may not easily match the expectations of the population, but it is the grim reality of our economic context today. If we continue in this vein, one can only think, that inequalities along these channels will increase in the future. In my keen interest in the area, I begin conversations with interested parties and those who feel affected by the widening gap in access to an equitable education.
“Schools are heavily under resourced in our area. The division has not seen an English teacher for years,” says an activist from Musali in the Northern Province. “A student had 2As and a C in the A/Levels. They were eligible to apply for the Town and Country Planning degree at Moratuwa University, but the degree programme demanded a B in English in the O/Level as a prerequisite, along with the appropriate Z score in the A/Levels. But this student had only an S in English. Another student had 8 As in the O/level examination, but failed their English… There are 22 to 23 schools in the district and only 2 or 3 English teachers. Teachers are appointed on various schemes, and they want the job. They take up the teaching position, at first, and then in about three months, somehow get a transfer and move to a school closer to where they reside or is in a more central place.”
Another activist, this time from Jaffna town itself, but working in the Northern Province as a whole, recounts a tale of how the transport system functions to enable long distance commuting of teachers from Jaffna to the peripheral areas of the north. As he says, two buses leave Karainagar (a sea side town located at one end of the Jaffna peninsula), and make their way, one going toward Mullaithivu and the other toward Madhu in the Mannar district, taking teachers (along with other travellers of course) to these destinations, every working day. I looked up the distance on Google. It takes more than three hours by car to travel from Karainagar to Madhu. He continues, “How can they teach after travelling this long a time?”
The dearth of teachers at rural schools seems to run deep. But the problem is not only with remote areas. A 12- year old child, going to a school in a suburb of Colombo, accessed by low income families, tells me, “They don’t have English.” “What do you mean? Of course there is English in your school.” He says he has never had an English class. English has always been of importance, and much time and money has gone into enhancing English instruction schools, but structural inequalities have exacerbated already existing divides in recent times, with competence in English becoming more and more a structural requirement in university admission and university. More and more study programmes are requiring qualification at the O/Levels or in the general subject of English at the A/Level, for admission.
Inequalities are not only with regard to English. For decades now, much of the conversation around university admission has been about how one should increase the numbers of science-based disciplines and science oriented faculties. Report after report on education, often commissioned by the state, underline this concern in their narratives. In fact, the problem of unemployment has been placed squarely at the feet of Arts disciplines and Arts students. There are too many Arts students is the mantra one hears repeatedly. This trend has slightly reversed since 2019; admission numbers show that science-based disciplines now account for more than half of university admissions—48.2% for Arts (Humanities, Social Sciences, Management/Commerce) and 51% in Science-based disciplines between 2019 and 2022. Whether the problem of employment will be solved through this measure, though, is doubtful; one does want to think it may address the issue at least partially.
However, there is a greater problem facing us concerning inequality in university admission. Figures for admission for 2022 show that (only) 20.1% of the total number of qualified students were admitted to the university in the Arts streams; while in the Science streams, the proportion was 37.0% of the total number of those qualified. A larger percentage of eligible students in the Arts streams is left out of university admission in comparison with the percentage left out in science- based streams. Again, If one looks at numbers, we see that for 2022/23, the highest percentages of students gaining admission to Science streams out of the overall number of qualifying students are from the districts of Colombo, Gampaha, and Galle, large metropolitan centers, while the lowest numbers are from Moneragala, Kilinochchi and Nuwara Eliya. Does this pattern not tell us something?
These numbers point to a geographical mapping of the political economy of class and ethnicity. I have more numbers. Of the 2911 schools out there, for grades 12-13 (A/Levels), only 1012 schools are 1AB (offerings both Arts and Science streams), while 1899 schools are 1C (offering only Arts subjects) schools. Unfortunately, these numbers do not tell us where the 1AB schools are located within a district: urban/town/rural/remote from the centre.
We need to scrutinize these numbers for what they may mean in terms of equity. And, I do not want to proffer too narrow an analytic lens here. When we look at the overall situation, it does appear, that rural and lower income students are in a severely disadvantaged position. It is clear that many students in our general education system are left out of an equitable education. And in saying this, I do not mean only science-based education or English. The exclusions point to a bigger malaise in our system, namely underfunding and under resourcing of schools, and the lack of a well thought-out national plan. My activist friend from Jaffna, continues: “It would be good to have primary and secondary level teachers, in some subjects at least, to be recruited from the area; they will be committed and may be induced to stay. They have a home there, a family.” I am not at all sure whether this is the solution or even a solution. Ultimately, for my 12-yearold friend from my neighbourhood in Colombo, and his family, it might not matter whether there were an English teacher or not in his school. The realities of education do not point to such hope, or even expectation. His father and mother work in the informal sector in and around Colombo. His sisters are in West Asian countries, as domestic workers. I don’t know what he dreams of. “His teacher tells he’s artistic and draws well” his mother tells me. And then she takes off to do shramadana at her son’s school, forgoing her wage for the day, joined by other mothers, presumably, to get the school ready for the new term.
