“There is no single solution to the problem facing school leavers in Sri Lanka, because the problem is really a whole set of problems, a total situation. Schools cannot by themselves make jobs. Good economic management by the government and a spirit of enterprise in the community are essential if school leavers are to get the kind of opportunities they aspire to.”__________________________________
by Dr. Tilokasundari Kariyawasam
(February 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The school leavers’ problem is a central issue for educational planning, both because the destiny of school leavers is the key to identifying what we mean by a relevant education and also because school leavers without work have been regarded as a very grave problem to the State.
The brute facts are that educational inflation in Sri Lanka has been rampant. Demand for further educational opportunities has rapidly increased, but the ‘purchasing power’ in the job market of given levels of education has been steadily eroded. Frustration and resentment on the part of school leavers who cannot find work remain. Disappointment, anxiety, frustration and misery is the lot of many. In Sri Lanka the number of educated unemployed is escalating. The double cost of maintaining an inflated and expensive education system as well as an excessive pool of unemployed job seekers may be regarded as wasteful.
The category of school leavers contains a range of different school attainments and circumstances of leaving. Some have left school early, for financial reasons, or because they are needed at home. Others have a full GCE O/L certificate to their credit. Some would dearly love to continue, but their modest examination results or lack of financial means prevent them. Of those who sit the GCE A/L examination and attain the grade, only 1.9 per cent enter university. Even those qualified for admission are not entertained for lack of places in universities. These students view it as a spasm of desperation. The implicit deal so many Sri Lankan kids made, study hard, get good grades, go to university, land a job been broken. And in place of this comfortable life they face a moribund economy and a diminishing economy. In real life, youth have been on a steady, descending spiral of listlessness, disenchantment and rebellion.
The real magnitude of the school leavers’ dilemma so serious in human terms is an index telling us of much that is wrong with present day policies and practices aimed at development.
Joblessness is not normally blamed predominantly on school. Inappropriate educational provisions are a prime cause of the high unemployment rate of a country. The sense of frustration over education’s rewards for the individual has increased. ‘Educational inflation’ has progressed. The effect of educational enrolment growing faster than jobs has been to raise the educational qualifications required in recruitment for almost every type of job.
The content and style of education contribute to school leavers in Human Resources Development (HRD). Schools prepare students only for white-collar jobs in the town and fail to teach them useful skills which are in demand in the rural economy. They overrate fact and theory and devalue practice. Worse, they are anti-developmental so far as they discourage initiatives and restrict creativity. Some features of schooling undoubtedly do appear to be counter-productive. Examples are the over valuation in schools of knowledge in relation to experience, of qualifications in relation to abilities. Some principals forbid the participation of students in extracurricular activities. It appears as if extracurricular activities are a nonentity in schools today. If management is the key to development, it often seems as if youths out of school have more opportunity to exercise real choices, than those enrolled in the education system. It is unfortunately true that decision making does not as yet play any great part in the courses being introduced in secondary and tertiary level. True as this may be, it is not clear that the economic rate of return to educational investment is zero, let alone negative. Against the ill effects of education must be set the development of skills, knowledge and abilities, making them more adaptable.
There is no single solution to the problem facing school leavers in Sri Lanka, because the problem is really a whole set of problems, a total situation. Schools cannot by themselves make jobs. Good economic management by the government and a spirit of enterprise in the community are essential if school leavers are to get the kind of opportunities they aspire to.
The movement of school leavers to towns is absolutely natural and absolutely essential; it is not a disease, it is a very right and proper economic activity. It is part of the diversification of life by which we partly define ‘development’.
Nearly all the people who work at the rural end of the problem see it as a loss of the best people in the village; it is the most enterprising and the best educated who move. It is also mainly the young people. But at the urban end these migrants are largely seen as a lot of thieves and squatters. It is curious how these two views have existed side by side for a long time. Kenya used to bulldoze shanty towns. Lusaka bemoaning the fact, has at least given up the idea of bulldozing. Nairobi spent huge sums on its development and neglected the rural sector.
We must accept that it is a natural movement that is inevitable and that these people are a selection of the best that the countryside can produce. So it is important that we treat them well. A great deal of the trouble is due to the fact that migration is usually to the capital city, so that it grows much faster than provincial towns. The sort of solutions necessary are the development of provincial towns in every possible way to treat the migrant well. The improvement of transport and communication facilities, the delegation of more power, the siting of small industries, and making provisions for training to establish site and service schemes in provincial towns are necessary. Much more administration power should be delegated and much more money allocated to provincial centres. Above all, farm incomes should be increased because it is these that eventually generate more jobs in service, construction, small shops and hotels and in the demand for consumer goods from industry.
But the sheer magnitude of the school leavers’ dilemma is an index telling us of much that is wrong with present day policies and practices aimed at development. The solution to the school leavers’ problem is in large part economic. Secondly is the kind of education available in schools and the learning processes outside schools.
First and foremost the problem of school leavers is a commentary on the functioning of the economy. It is to economic measures that we look first to attempt to alleviate the problem.
There is virtually a general agreement on human growth development and economic growth. Primary education unquestionably exerts a decisive impact on economic productivity. In the modern day context of accelerated technological change, education has a crucial role to play. A developing country’s capability of participating in the benefits of technological progress and of contributing actively to technological innovation, depends on a number of educational prerequisites. High level researchers, engineers and technicians must be trained and used effectively. Without them, they cannot assess the possible choices, select appropriately or apply what they choose to their own texts. Without them there is no choice but to fall behind forever. The success of India lies in applying this principle to education. In the school system, for advanced studies, sound basic literacy and numeric skills, middle-level technical and organisational skills, high level cognitive skills, abstract reasoning and problem solving should be the cornerstones of the mastery of technological advance.
It requires sustained efforts and permanent control and correction of imbalances, mismatches and gaps within the education system as well as between the human resources trained in the latter and the human resources needed for development if we are determined to solve the school leavers’ problem.
Cultural traditions are key determinants of future trends. When they are ignored by policy makers, they may assert themselves in unexpected ways. They are capable of affecting the future of an education system, if not destroying it, and too rapid change in an educational model without paying due attention to cultural factors can have serious repercussions. This is reflected in the school leavers’ problems. Guy Hunter’s suggestion that more stress should be given to the nature of the society and culture in which children are growing up, and how one could make it more solid and real and more supportive, with its best ideals incorporated into the songs and dance, leisure and activities of the people should be heeded. The culture of a people derives much of its strength from history and beliefs, observances, discipline and morals. A vital culture lends support to society and the educational system and helps to take their places in the society, in the family system. There is art, music, dance, song, riddle-making tradition, stories of old people and their beliefs, stories about animals and their wisdom. These things could be collected, collated, recorded, reproduced so as to form a greater part of Sri Lanka’s education than at present. A lot of this cannot be done in English; only the original language produces the intended emotional effect or puns, echoes and noises. Such culture should be given in childhood to sustain people through life.
This will require that more attention is given in the curricula to such subjects as arts, music, dance, environment, history, literature, geography, international understanding, national and international languages.
After the primary stage, a far greater variety of modern ‘handyman’ training is needed. Handiness could be with a pen or an account book or typewriter, or a tape measure, as well as with a bicycle or a pump or in the building of a home. Sri Lanka has demonstrated successful models to us in the Gangarama Industrial Complex, Diyagala Boys Town project and De la Sallian Project. Such models should be sponsored by the State. It is not something new. It has existed for nearly 2500 years. But it has to be deliberately and completely modern. It should try to produce some vision of what the modern world is, mixed up, of course, with teaching skills, English, numeracy etc. This has to be done in simple ways. Modernity is part of their contemporary world.
‘Secondary’ education needs a huge variety of types and levels merging at one end with University or College of Technology entrance and at the other with a village polytechnic. More fruitful would be the provisions in a myriad of different ways and through a host of different agencies - education institutions, churches, temples, employers, youth clubs, sports associations, cultural groups of learning opportunities and social facilities for young people. The chance to continue learning and acquire skills is obviously vital, but no less important are the recreational, cultural and social needs of young school leavers.
As formal education expanded and developed, the influence of the university became critical. Universities retain the search for knowledge, and through their entrance requirements press the need for academic disciplines. These entrance requirements have influenced the development of mass examination systems, which now provide the major mechanism for selection and allocation for employment and thereby for economic and social mobility. The dominance of the academic factor in selection, and hence mobility, is obvious to all, especially to ambitious pupils, parents, teachers and principals.
As a consequence, the form of the examinations sets limits to the form and range of the teaching and learning and creates a backwash effect.
In Sri Lanka concern is still focused on the massive pressure for more and more academic schooling despite obvious unemployment. Vocational education although proposed by the Free Education Bill of 1945 did not find its way into the school system due to these stubborn factors and the country is paying heavily for that.
Today an attempt is being made to bring together these various educational functions, child care, academic learning, vocational preparation, within one all comprehensive pattern of schooling. In practice it has proved a failure and human resource development will remain a very tricky problem for many years to come. Non formal education must receive high priority and the education system should strike an optimum balance between secondary, general and vocational sections.
Schools as formal institutions aim at selection qualifications, but there is non-formal education which includes a range of activities such as youth clubs, literacy centres and apprenticeship schemes and village polytechnics. This is a sort of institutional pattern which focuses on the reality of the here and now. A related approach recognises informal education carried out through the family and on the job. It is important to diversify the form education takes in order to develop new ideas and techniques and to break up the monolithic linear pattern of academic selections and the backwash it creates.
Curricular development today emphasises conceptual learning. This conceptual influence needs to be paralleled with a contextual influence. The pattern of curriculum development in Sri Lanka is rather dangerous. We are tending to copy the most modern practices whatever the cost rather than considering the way in which the modern principles of curriculum development can be related to the realities of a developing society.
In most developed countries, there are other routes for those who seek to take them - night school, apprenticeships and the increasing emphasis upon second chance institutions like the Open University. In theory everyone has a second chance. Night schools in Sri Lanka proved a versatile model in the past. The Open University does not reach the remote areas as it should, when so clearly the labour services of school leavers can be very significant economically.
Are we involved with the aspirations only of the school leavers themselves or with the hopes of their families. Obviously parents and other family members are intimately involved. So clearly the labour services of children can be very significant economically. The expectations of family members in support of the job-seeking school leavers are frequently vital in explaining the note of urgency in the school leavers’ bid for employment.
by Dr. Tilokasundari Kariyawasam
(February 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The school leavers’ problem is a central issue for educational planning, both because the destiny of school leavers is the key to identifying what we mean by a relevant education and also because school leavers without work have been regarded as a very grave problem to the State.
The brute facts are that educational inflation in Sri Lanka has been rampant. Demand for further educational opportunities has rapidly increased, but the ‘purchasing power’ in the job market of given levels of education has been steadily eroded. Frustration and resentment on the part of school leavers who cannot find work remain. Disappointment, anxiety, frustration and misery is the lot of many. In Sri Lanka the number of educated unemployed is escalating. The double cost of maintaining an inflated and expensive education system as well as an excessive pool of unemployed job seekers may be regarded as wasteful.
The category of school leavers contains a range of different school attainments and circumstances of leaving. Some have left school early, for financial reasons, or because they are needed at home. Others have a full GCE O/L certificate to their credit. Some would dearly love to continue, but their modest examination results or lack of financial means prevent them. Of those who sit the GCE A/L examination and attain the grade, only 1.9 per cent enter university. Even those qualified for admission are not entertained for lack of places in universities. These students view it as a spasm of desperation. The implicit deal so many Sri Lankan kids made, study hard, get good grades, go to university, land a job been broken. And in place of this comfortable life they face a moribund economy and a diminishing economy. In real life, youth have been on a steady, descending spiral of listlessness, disenchantment and rebellion.
The real magnitude of the school leavers’ dilemma so serious in human terms is an index telling us of much that is wrong with present day policies and practices aimed at development.
Joblessness is not normally blamed predominantly on school. Inappropriate educational provisions are a prime cause of the high unemployment rate of a country. The sense of frustration over education’s rewards for the individual has increased. ‘Educational inflation’ has progressed. The effect of educational enrolment growing faster than jobs has been to raise the educational qualifications required in recruitment for almost every type of job.
The content and style of education contribute to school leavers in Human Resources Development (HRD). Schools prepare students only for white-collar jobs in the town and fail to teach them useful skills which are in demand in the rural economy. They overrate fact and theory and devalue practice. Worse, they are anti-developmental so far as they discourage initiatives and restrict creativity. Some features of schooling undoubtedly do appear to be counter-productive. Examples are the over valuation in schools of knowledge in relation to experience, of qualifications in relation to abilities. Some principals forbid the participation of students in extracurricular activities. It appears as if extracurricular activities are a nonentity in schools today. If management is the key to development, it often seems as if youths out of school have more opportunity to exercise real choices, than those enrolled in the education system. It is unfortunately true that decision making does not as yet play any great part in the courses being introduced in secondary and tertiary level. True as this may be, it is not clear that the economic rate of return to educational investment is zero, let alone negative. Against the ill effects of education must be set the development of skills, knowledge and abilities, making them more adaptable.
There is no single solution to the problem facing school leavers in Sri Lanka, because the problem is really a whole set of problems, a total situation. Schools cannot by themselves make jobs. Good economic management by the government and a spirit of enterprise in the community are essential if school leavers are to get the kind of opportunities they aspire to.
The movement of school leavers to towns is absolutely natural and absolutely essential; it is not a disease, it is a very right and proper economic activity. It is part of the diversification of life by which we partly define ‘development’.
Nearly all the people who work at the rural end of the problem see it as a loss of the best people in the village; it is the most enterprising and the best educated who move. It is also mainly the young people. But at the urban end these migrants are largely seen as a lot of thieves and squatters. It is curious how these two views have existed side by side for a long time. Kenya used to bulldoze shanty towns. Lusaka bemoaning the fact, has at least given up the idea of bulldozing. Nairobi spent huge sums on its development and neglected the rural sector.
We must accept that it is a natural movement that is inevitable and that these people are a selection of the best that the countryside can produce. So it is important that we treat them well. A great deal of the trouble is due to the fact that migration is usually to the capital city, so that it grows much faster than provincial towns. The sort of solutions necessary are the development of provincial towns in every possible way to treat the migrant well. The improvement of transport and communication facilities, the delegation of more power, the siting of small industries, and making provisions for training to establish site and service schemes in provincial towns are necessary. Much more administration power should be delegated and much more money allocated to provincial centres. Above all, farm incomes should be increased because it is these that eventually generate more jobs in service, construction, small shops and hotels and in the demand for consumer goods from industry.
But the sheer magnitude of the school leavers’ dilemma is an index telling us of much that is wrong with present day policies and practices aimed at development. The solution to the school leavers’ problem is in large part economic. Secondly is the kind of education available in schools and the learning processes outside schools.
First and foremost the problem of school leavers is a commentary on the functioning of the economy. It is to economic measures that we look first to attempt to alleviate the problem.
There is virtually a general agreement on human growth development and economic growth. Primary education unquestionably exerts a decisive impact on economic productivity. In the modern day context of accelerated technological change, education has a crucial role to play. A developing country’s capability of participating in the benefits of technological progress and of contributing actively to technological innovation, depends on a number of educational prerequisites. High level researchers, engineers and technicians must be trained and used effectively. Without them, they cannot assess the possible choices, select appropriately or apply what they choose to their own texts. Without them there is no choice but to fall behind forever. The success of India lies in applying this principle to education. In the school system, for advanced studies, sound basic literacy and numeric skills, middle-level technical and organisational skills, high level cognitive skills, abstract reasoning and problem solving should be the cornerstones of the mastery of technological advance.
It requires sustained efforts and permanent control and correction of imbalances, mismatches and gaps within the education system as well as between the human resources trained in the latter and the human resources needed for development if we are determined to solve the school leavers’ problem.
Cultural traditions are key determinants of future trends. When they are ignored by policy makers, they may assert themselves in unexpected ways. They are capable of affecting the future of an education system, if not destroying it, and too rapid change in an educational model without paying due attention to cultural factors can have serious repercussions. This is reflected in the school leavers’ problems. Guy Hunter’s suggestion that more stress should be given to the nature of the society and culture in which children are growing up, and how one could make it more solid and real and more supportive, with its best ideals incorporated into the songs and dance, leisure and activities of the people should be heeded. The culture of a people derives much of its strength from history and beliefs, observances, discipline and morals. A vital culture lends support to society and the educational system and helps to take their places in the society, in the family system. There is art, music, dance, song, riddle-making tradition, stories of old people and their beliefs, stories about animals and their wisdom. These things could be collected, collated, recorded, reproduced so as to form a greater part of Sri Lanka’s education than at present. A lot of this cannot be done in English; only the original language produces the intended emotional effect or puns, echoes and noises. Such culture should be given in childhood to sustain people through life.
This will require that more attention is given in the curricula to such subjects as arts, music, dance, environment, history, literature, geography, international understanding, national and international languages.
After the primary stage, a far greater variety of modern ‘handyman’ training is needed. Handiness could be with a pen or an account book or typewriter, or a tape measure, as well as with a bicycle or a pump or in the building of a home. Sri Lanka has demonstrated successful models to us in the Gangarama Industrial Complex, Diyagala Boys Town project and De la Sallian Project. Such models should be sponsored by the State. It is not something new. It has existed for nearly 2500 years. But it has to be deliberately and completely modern. It should try to produce some vision of what the modern world is, mixed up, of course, with teaching skills, English, numeracy etc. This has to be done in simple ways. Modernity is part of their contemporary world.
‘Secondary’ education needs a huge variety of types and levels merging at one end with University or College of Technology entrance and at the other with a village polytechnic. More fruitful would be the provisions in a myriad of different ways and through a host of different agencies - education institutions, churches, temples, employers, youth clubs, sports associations, cultural groups of learning opportunities and social facilities for young people. The chance to continue learning and acquire skills is obviously vital, but no less important are the recreational, cultural and social needs of young school leavers.
As formal education expanded and developed, the influence of the university became critical. Universities retain the search for knowledge, and through their entrance requirements press the need for academic disciplines. These entrance requirements have influenced the development of mass examination systems, which now provide the major mechanism for selection and allocation for employment and thereby for economic and social mobility. The dominance of the academic factor in selection, and hence mobility, is obvious to all, especially to ambitious pupils, parents, teachers and principals.
As a consequence, the form of the examinations sets limits to the form and range of the teaching and learning and creates a backwash effect.
In Sri Lanka concern is still focused on the massive pressure for more and more academic schooling despite obvious unemployment. Vocational education although proposed by the Free Education Bill of 1945 did not find its way into the school system due to these stubborn factors and the country is paying heavily for that.
Today an attempt is being made to bring together these various educational functions, child care, academic learning, vocational preparation, within one all comprehensive pattern of schooling. In practice it has proved a failure and human resource development will remain a very tricky problem for many years to come. Non formal education must receive high priority and the education system should strike an optimum balance between secondary, general and vocational sections.
Schools as formal institutions aim at selection qualifications, but there is non-formal education which includes a range of activities such as youth clubs, literacy centres and apprenticeship schemes and village polytechnics. This is a sort of institutional pattern which focuses on the reality of the here and now. A related approach recognises informal education carried out through the family and on the job. It is important to diversify the form education takes in order to develop new ideas and techniques and to break up the monolithic linear pattern of academic selections and the backwash it creates.
Curricular development today emphasises conceptual learning. This conceptual influence needs to be paralleled with a contextual influence. The pattern of curriculum development in Sri Lanka is rather dangerous. We are tending to copy the most modern practices whatever the cost rather than considering the way in which the modern principles of curriculum development can be related to the realities of a developing society.
In most developed countries, there are other routes for those who seek to take them - night school, apprenticeships and the increasing emphasis upon second chance institutions like the Open University. In theory everyone has a second chance. Night schools in Sri Lanka proved a versatile model in the past. The Open University does not reach the remote areas as it should, when so clearly the labour services of school leavers can be very significant economically.
Are we involved with the aspirations only of the school leavers themselves or with the hopes of their families. Obviously parents and other family members are intimately involved. So clearly the labour services of children can be very significant economically. The expectations of family members in support of the job-seeking school leavers are frequently vital in explaining the note of urgency in the school leavers’ bid for employment.
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