Challenge of education reforms

The country is abuzz with the talk of education sector reforms, which have drawn both praise and criticism. In Sri Lanka education reforms have always proved to be controversial and most political parties buckle under pressure from trade unions and ditch whatever reforms they are planning. It will be interesting to watch how far Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, who is the Minister of Education and Higher Education, will be able to take this forward.

Under the proposed reforms, the first G.C.E. (Ordinary Level) Examination will be conducted in 2029. This examination will be based on seven subjects of the common core curriculum with five compulsory subjects and two subjects selected from nine elective subjects. The compulsory subjects are mother tongue (Sinhala/Tamil), English Language, Mathematics, Science and Religion and Value Education.

History, Geography, and Second National Language will be among the nine elective subjects, two of which the students can choose as subjects for the O/Ls.

The decision to make history elective or optional has caused a row with many criticising the decision. Some have interpreted it as an attack on the country’s history and an attempt to keep the younger generations from learning about the past glory of the country.

The Government says that though history will not be mandatory, those interested will be able to select it as a subject. Hence there has been a lot of to and fro and as the months progress, this debate is likely to intensify.

A key addition to the education reforms is the conduct of psychometric tests/skill tests at Grade nine for all students from 2029 onwards. This test will include assessment on literacy skills and numeracy skills and a career interest test to assess the tendency to pursue further studies in a specific field.

The idea is to identify the different talents in students and guide them towards them and not let them get trapped in the usual popular career choices such as medicine, engineering, law, etc. This is meant to identify students whose strengths may lie in other fields but due to peer pressure they abandon these interests and get into the popular career brackets.

This is a welcome change and it is hopeful that parents too support this kind of venture because unless adults also change attitudes, children will be trapped too in a vicious cycle of trying to do as all do and then end up disappointed and maybe even consider themselves failures.

The curriculum reforms for Grades 1 and 6 will begin from next year and under this, each classroom period will be 50 minutes, and the total school time will be extended by 30 minutes. This is to add more physical activity for children, which too is a welcome move.

But whatever reforms are mooted, the worldwide education system has to undergo radical changes in this day and age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the easy access to information like never before. Higher education courses conducted in the traditional manner are fast becoming obsolete. Writing a thesis/dissertation is just a matter of giving a prompt and your work is done in no time. The enormity of the information age is dawning on us and whatever reforms Sri Lanka is looking at already seems archaic.

The only way a country will be able to produce intelligence and knowledge citizens will no longer be by studying the usual subjects in classrooms. What the younger generation will have to develop is social skills, practical abilities and an analytical mind. So, while reforms to the current education system are welcome, they will not make much of a difference in the long term given how fast the world is moving. Sri Lanka is already very late to get on board but better late than never to get the education system on track to the future.