Requirements for New Education Transformation and skilled development.

Higher education and Tertiary Education sectors are one of the most powerful sectors of education in Sri Lanka and it will inspire the country’s value, ethics and social institutions so that Sri Lanka becomes celebrated as an enlightened and peaceful multi-ethic, multi-religious and multi-cultural society. Particularly, the examination-orientated teaching in Sri Lanka’s education system needs to change urgently. Examination standards are often out of context. An appropriate grading and reporting system must be accepted without delay, as the current methods do not replicate a meaningful feedback to students. The mental and psychological pressures exerted on children due to the present system must be carefully studied and remedied as a matter of priority. Dependence on extra tuition involving extra spending for parents and study time for students must be reduced or done away with. This article has focused the achievement, challenges of education system in Sri Lanka and the strategies which have developed to overcome the existing challenges in future.

EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Sri Lanka education has been the example of many countries. It has created many achievements in education since after independence. I've figured out those achievements here.

• ·        Initiated free education for primary and secondary educations in 1943.
• ·        Achieved very good education indices in Asia by 1960’s
• ·        Achieved universal access to primary education by 99.6
• ·     Achieved Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 2, 3,4,5,6 & 7 with health and education indicators.

CHALLENGES

In the developing world, change is taking place every day. We see that, it has a great influence on education. Countries that make changes in education policy are moving forward to meet such a change. Countries that do not admit such changes have been able to create a workforce that cannot be marketed.

Each year, the number of students who are not able to enter the university has been gradually increasing. Gross enrolment ratio (GER) at tertiary level 17%, 24,198 (16.7%) was only selected out of 144,816 which qualified for state university entrance.

Main challenges of the education system are lack of quality, attractive and relevance to job market. The bellow table shows the quality of education rang is very lower when we compare with other countries.

Ø  Changing population profile from child to adolescent & youth

Ø  Increase labour force from 7.3 million in 2010 to 8.9 million in 2015

Ø  Annually about 150,000  adolescents and youth join the labour force with low skills or no skills at all

Ø  Unemployment rate is 4.3% but youth unemployment is higher (13%)

(Source:http://www.statistics.gov.lk/samplesurvey/2015Q4report.pdf)

Percentage of students by stream

There is a common criticism that the Universities do not have the appropriate education system for students to meet the requirement of the labour market. Because they are producing more and more arts graduate even those who are not having such a demand in the job market. These data indicate that students are more educated arts stream (52%).

Percentage of A/L students by stream

Graduate output by stream

Employed by Discipline

If you see the data, those who have completed medicine, engineering and IT have higher demand in the labour market, on the other hand those who followed arts discipline have very lower demand. According the information from http://www.tissl.lk/Presentation1.ppsx, employment opportunity for medicine, IT, engineering respectively were 93%, 97% and 91% while arts dropped by 35% in 2013.

STRATEGIES FOR NEW REFORMS

So to overcome the above challenges, there are particular strategies have proposed bellow.

Ø Strengthening organizational linkages among the relevant Ministries (Education, Higher Education, Youth affairs, Skills Development, Labour, and Productivity).

Ø  Introduction of Mandatory career guidance in schools and higher education institutions.

Ø  Strengthening English Teaching and Trilingualism (Sinhala, Tamil and English) and Introducing assessments for listening and speaking skills.

Ø  Decent work available for adolescent and youth through skill enhancement - Strengthen regulated & certified vocational  training

1. Degrees at Universities to be labour demand oriented- The curriculum content of academic programmes will be redesigned to match the requirements of employers with new Technology Faculties.
2.  Skills of Migrant labour improved - Vocational training to cater to ‘skilled’ migrant labour force as opposed to the ‘unskilled’ in the past towards decent work.

• Ø  Public-private partnership in education and training - Non-state universities and degree awarding institutions will be encouraged, with regulatory controls on quality and accreditation requirements. And while significant investment will be done as a part of the joint loan programme from private institutions.

 Ø  Provide the monthly financial stipend similar to Mahapola scheme to improve     the social recognition of Technical and vocational education and training             (TVET) to attract the sufficient number of students.

1.   More liberal education grants, scholarships, bursaries, bank loans are recommended.

2.   Learner support with more apprenticeship and on the job training opportunities to lesson the financial burdens on the families should be organized.

3.   Create an environment for private sector sponsorship of students in government tertiary education institutes by consulting their views on course renewal and curriculum development

 Ø  Introduce modules on entrepreneurship, finance, business ethics and personality development in TVET.

 Ø    Increase the quality and relevance of existing academic programs at the higher educational institutions.

            o   Soft skill development of students

o   Updating curriculum

o   Development of new academic programme

o   Staffs development

    Ø  Awareness programmes should be organized for more females to undertake studies in the fields of nursing, home economics, hotel receptionists, airline ticketing, beautician courses etc.

References

1.   Increasing the allocation for the education to 6% of GDP proposal. Tertiary, vocational & Professional Education-2015, NHRDC

2.   Increasing the allocation for the education to 6% of GDP proposal. Higher (University) Education.

3.   Options for expanding access to higher education for g.c.e. (a/l) completers

National Education Commission, Sri Lanka, October, 2007.

4.   Statistical Bulletin on Education, NHRDC 2015

5.   http://www.tissl.lk/Presentation1.ppsx