Comments on: How Free is Free Education?: Educational Stratification in Sri Lanka: 1985-2010 https://groundviews.org/2015/02/08/how-free-is-free-education-educational-stratification-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-free-is-free-education-educational-stratification-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010 Journalism for Citizens Tue, 03 Mar 2015 14:37:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: rlcole https://groundviews.org/2015/02/08/how-free-is-free-education-educational-stratification-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010/#comment-59791 Tue, 03 Mar 2015 14:37:00 +0000 http://groundviews.org/?p=17323#comment-59791 In reply to Sharanga Ratnayake.

Sharanga, I take your point, but the kinds of jobs boys are taking when the leave school early are low wage and low skill jobs. Such jobs are unlikely to provide for them well as individuals, or to boost the Sri Lankan economy as a whole. Meanwhile, though more girls are passing O/L than in the past, I believe there is no change in the rate a which they are dropping out of the workforce after only a few years of work to become housewives. This is the basis of my concern about the gender gap.

]]> By: Sharanga Ratnayake https://groundviews.org/2015/02/08/how-free-is-free-education-educational-stratification-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010/#comment-59723 Mon, 09 Feb 2015 09:41:00 +0000 http://groundviews.org/?p=17323#comment-59723 About the gender gap, my guess is that boys drop out more because they have more career options compared to girls, and because they are generally more risk taking than girls. This has always been the case, and during the last ten years boys would join the army if nothing else worked out. Even though boys perform worse than girls on average, they still perform pretty well at the extreme top. Boys topped the rankings based on A/L mathematics results all throughout last five years, I think. That shows this has nothing do with government policy. So this is the one gap I wouldn’t really be worried about.

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