'Window of Opportunity opens for Lankan education'

Text of speech by Secretary, Ministry of Education, Dr. Tara de Mel, to the Asian Round Table on Open and Distance Learning for Attainment of Millennium Development Goals

PROF. UMA Cumaraswamy in her letter of invitation to me to this Round Table says that "traditional formal methods of education alone are far too inadequate to meet the demands set by the Millennium Development Goals". I cannot agree more.

As a force contributing to social and economic development, Open and Distance Learning (ODL) has fast become an indispensable part of the main stream of educational systems. This is true of both developed and developing countries.

This phenomenal growth of ODL, has been stimulated at least in part by interest amongst educators and trainers in the case of new internet-based, multi-media technologies.

They have also realized that traditional ways of organizing education needs have to be reinforced by innovative methods - if the fundamental right of all people to learning, is to be realized.

Reaching the Millennium Development Goals requires a substantial and accelerated program of work through the traditional and non-traditional methods of education. Modernized programs for Open and Distance Learning have to necessarily be a part of this.

Facing new training demands, new competitive challenges, and most of all implementing profound changes in governance, organizational structures and modes of operations in delivery, become priority.

The Sri Lankan education system has been celebrated in development policy circles and in economic literature for its successes in providing widespread access to primary and secondary education.

This undoubtedly paved the way for us to attain a high level of human development for a low-income country. In fact the UNDP data show that we are placed at 96/177 in the human development index ranking for 2004.

Enlightened and visionary policies of our leaders in the 1930s and 1940s showed that they knew the importance of investing in human capital. This is precisely what propelled our education system fast and far ahead of many Asian and South East Asian nations giving us that competitive edge in the pre independence era.

Unfortunately over the past 50 years or so the economic performance of the country lagged behind the pace of education development. The consequences were adverse. We lost that lead we had in education.

This poor economic growth led to us investing less and less in education. And countries like Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Honk Kong and Thailand forged ahead and overtook us in all spheres of education and training.

In addition to slow growth, the numbers of educated young people equipped with the necessary skills and attributes failed to expand sufficiently rapidly to match the newer demands of the labour market. This has led to the enduring problem of educated but unemployed youth seeking employment. Thereby we gradually lost our human capital.

Furthermore policy makers in the last several decades did not focus sufficiently on certain thrust areas that our neighbours did quite rightly - i.e. Maths, Science, English, Information Technology and other technological subjects. Open and Distance Learning (ODL), using web-based systems of education and training which would have provided access to large numbers to higher education, also did not enjoy high priority.

While those countries modernized their education systems, we stayed where we were.

It is important that I make these remarks in the preamble to understand in context, our vision, our policies, and our challenges in moving forward the Education Reform agenda.

We are meeting today at a time that the Government of Sri Lanka is vigorously reviving its efforts to modernize our systems to restore its competitive edge in education and training.

We have embarked upon a program of curriculum reform for all grades after an 8-year cycle, which began in 1999. Our focus is on emphasizing and institutionalizing competency-based learning, thinking and analytical skills, creativity and innovation. Problem-solving/activity-based learning through project work, assignments and practicals will take focus.

Maths, English, Science and IT will be introduced from Grades 1 to 13. Teacher training accordingly, with new training methodologies, comparing our syllabuses and curricula with those of other countries, ensuring that our examination systems are also geared to test these essential skills, will be highlighted. Teacher Training for these changes in the curricular is being planned to systematically take place from 2006 January.

There is also a program under way in improving infrastructure like school buildings, modernizing Science and IT laboratories and introducing new equipment.

Converting our schools into "smart/future schools" eventually, is our policy. Government allocations of funding are substantial for this endeavour and this is augmented from funding by our development partners.

We have also taken landmark initiatives to build our human resource base involved in education, teaching and governance, (i.e. Teachers, Principals, education administrators). Promotions that have been long overdue have been given ensuring upward career mobility. Necessary training and continued education is being provided through Training Colleges.

Training principals and teachers for managing and governing schools through new School Based Management programs is also under way.

Quality Assurance, benchmarking and accreditation of schools and universities both of the State and non-State sectors are now being implemented.

Although the establishment of private schools (Grades 1 to 9) has been legally banned since the early 1960s, over 200 private/international schools operate on the shores of this land.

We recently started a program to assess their quality and benchmark them according to specific criteria and to monitor the education they deliver to Sri Lankan children.

Sri Lanka is perhaps one out of about 5 countries in the world that has been forbidden legally to establish schools and universities in the non-State sector. Other low-income countries and states, famous for their high basic education achievements have done so many years ago. For example, in the State of Kerala in India, they rely heavily on the private sector schools.

Nearly 50% of enrolment in the primary and secondary schools of education is found in Kerala. Their education systems are getting modernized, in keeping with some of the new innovations of the more developed countries. This is the same in some low-income Latin American countries.

Despite our near 98% primary enrolment, our secondary enrolment in education is only about 70%.

In regard to higher education, with a pathetic overall enrolment in tertiary education of about 10% and a dismal 3% of the age cohort 18 - 25 in universities, we are still groping in the dark.

Tentative increments of 500, 1000 or 1500 students per year, in the 13 or 14 State universities in the country will never solve the problem of providing quality higher education to over 200,000 school leavers every year.

In preventing the establishment of private universities (entirely for political reasons) the Sri Lankan education system deviated from the methods adopted by some of the highest performing education systems in the world like South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. These countries focused their attention and government resources on primary and secondary sectors leaving the tertiary sector largely in the hands of the non-government/private sector.

These are self-imposed shackles and the penalties are paid by successive generations of young people.

The reform in the university sector is also substantial. Our development partners like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are presently contributing significantly in this regard through the Distance Education Modernization Project and Improving Quality and Relevance of Undergraduate Education Project (IRQUE).

We are encouraging universities to use the autonomy they have. We are pushing through changes like financial de-regulation, de-bureaucratization, encouraging academics to use new ideas, to innovate, to create imaginatively. We also encourage them to modernize their curricular and teaching methods and to introduce their own income generating programs, with no interference from the government.

Through the IRQUE Project, for the first time we are seeing university academics competitively bidding for programs and projects for innovations in their relevant disciplines. For the first time we are seeing through the Quality Enhancement Fund, university teachers competing for research.

For the first time English, IT and Social Harmony modules will be part of the core curriculum, particularly for disciplines connected to Humanities and Social Sciences. Invariably this would make graduates coming from these disciplines more employable than they are now.

For the first time we are seeing Quality Assurance taking place in different universities and ranking of universities and departments according to specified criteria, through the Quality Assurance programs of the UGC.

With the next budgetary cycle, we will be also developing a funding formula for universities. And this will take into account performance - in academic and infrastructure development, through competitive bidding and qualitative ranking.

Now the time is ripe for Sri Lanka to create a revolution in ODL.

The excellent work of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL), spearheaded by Prof. Uma Coomaraswamy must now shift gear.

Sri Lanka must enter the league of its neighbours rapidly - by shifting to dual/multi-mode teaching/learning, through multiple centers across the country and through the other innovations of the DEMP. Our percentage of students learning through ODL modalities must drastically increase. The numbers enrolled for higher education must substantially rise through external degree programs using ODL.

I believe, in countries like Thailand nearly 50% students use ODL for Higher Education. The Indira Gandhi Open University is known world-wide for the teaching/learning it provides globally through ODL. There are many more such examples. This is the best method we can use to provide our 100,000+ students who have no hope of accessing conventional Higher Education.

Web-based learning must become fashionable - in the Secondary and Tertiary sectors and "Virtual Universities" must become a reality in Sri Lanka. These must cease to be uncharted territory, and must be made available to all our senior school students and school leavers.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Our challenges in facing a substantial and progressive reform in education are both complex and formidable.

There are many dangers in our path to progressive change and it would be foolish for us to ignore them.

Our skill would be to seek common ground between adversarial situations and mostly to have the courage and foresight to convert our crises into opportunity.

Today, we are fortunate that we have a window of opportunity before us to make a difference. We have an unprecedented situation where education has received the highest priority in our development agenda. It has also received the most amount of funding ever.

It gets its leadership from the highest in the land. We have been told to spare no effort in doing the best for this system. i.e. To ensure that all funding is used optimally, rapidly so that we see a profound improvement in our classroom and on campus so that our students and our teachers benefit the most.

Developing our education system with sophistication, professionalism and quality and the practical implementation of all what we say is our challenge.

I wish the Asian Round Table on Open and Distance Learning for attainment of Millennium Development Goals all success. These deliberations and the decisions arrived at would help us enormously in our way forward.