Comments on: How Free is Free Education? Private Household Spending on Education in Sri Lanka: 1985-2010 https://groundviews.org/2015/02/14/how-free-is-free-education-private-household-spending-on-education-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-free-is-free-education-private-household-spending-on-education-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010 Journalism for Citizens Tue, 03 Mar 2015 14:30:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: rlcole https://groundviews.org/2015/02/14/how-free-is-free-education-private-household-spending-on-education-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010/#comment-59790 Tue, 03 Mar 2015 14:30:00 +0000 http://groundviews.org/?p=17378#comment-59790 In reply to N. Ethirveerasingam.

Dear Dr. Ethirveerasingam,
Thanks for alerting me to your interesting and very detailed report. It was published about when I submitted my dissertation to my committee, but I hope to reference it in future work. While I lived in Kandy and visited Colombo I found it amazing how little most Sri Lankans knew about the state of affairs in the North, so it’s great that you were able to amass so much information. May it lead to better understanding!
Best wishes,
Rachel

]]> By: N. Ethirveerasingam https://groundviews.org/2015/02/14/how-free-is-free-education-private-household-spending-on-education-in-sri-lanka-1985-2010/#comment-59744 Sat, 14 Feb 2015 14:30:00 +0000 http://groundviews.org/?p=17378#comment-59744 Rachel Cole.
Thank you for publishing your study and the work you have done so far. You may wish to refer to the Northern Education System Review done by the Northern Province Ministry of Education and published in English and Tamil in July 2014.
http://www.edudept.np.gov.lk

Chapter 2: Current Situation, and Chapter 5: Tutories and Their Impact on the Education System … may be of interest to you for further study. The illustration in the Executive Summary p.xx shows the extent to which the GCE OL and GCE AL hangs over the head of children, parents, teachers and school administrators and controls the rote method teaching, learning and other activities to pass a paper and pencil competitive test.

In the Jaffna Peninsula, Students in GCE Advanced Level class final year do not attend school from January to July but attend Tutories preparing for the GCE AL Examination in August. If you ask the school authorities where their students are they will say the students are on Study leave!

There are other “Gems” in the Review for those who are interested to know to what extent the Northern Education System has become dysfunctional. This may be the case in most of the provinces.

Children in the Education System in the North, and it may be true for the rest of the country, do not have equal opportunities to maximise the potential they were born with. In rural and remote areas and in enclaves in urban and coastal areas are disadvantaged social communities ( An academic euphemism for the caste system and casual labour families that prevails in the country) birth and economic circumstances determines educational achievements even before they start school. And such schools in most part are staffed by low performing individuals most of whom try their best through nepotism to be posted to urban schools.

The revolutions in the South and the North for most part, but not all, has its roots in such inequalities perpetrated on the powerless.

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