Education Forum SL calls for urgent action on national education policy issues

Education Forum SL yesterday called for urgent action on several national education policy issues. 

Sujata Gamage and Tara de Mel, the co-founders of the Education Forum SL which focusses on catalysing policy reforms, also said delegating education decision-making to provinces is a constitutional mandate and not a discretion for the Ministry of Education.

Its full statement is as follows:

We are pleased to note that the Ministry of Education has delegated policymaking during the fuel crisis to provincial authorities with decisions on keeping schools opened delegated down to the school level with oversight by zonal authorities.

Additionally, the ministry has also announced delegating teacher deployment responsibilities to provincial authorities with exceptions regarding national schools.

While we are pleased with these developments, we wish to reiterate that the Constitution indeed delegates “supervision of the management of state schools” and other responsibilities to the provinces. 

Further, duties and functions of the Minister for Education, as per the latest gazette or ones before, do not entail decision-making regarding schools. As stated in the latest gazette, the duties and functions of the Minister for Education is “Formulation of policies, programs, and projects, monitoring, and evaluation in regard to the subject of education and those subjects that come under the purview of Departments, Statutory Institutions and Public Corporations listed in the gazette.” The entities listed do not include provincial departments of education or schools.

At a time of severe and prolonged economic crisis, it is particularly important that the line ministry stays within its mandate because children and families are best served by decentralising decision-making to the lowest level possible, in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity and the intent of devolution of education to provinces. As we saw during the COVID-19 crisis, school closures could have been better managed and more schools kept open for more days if decisions were made at the local level with the support of divisional medical officers of health.

Therefore, we respectfully request the Ministry of Education to focus on critical national education policy issues to:

• Reduce the examination burden on children
• Secure and distribute international aid to schools
• Focus on outcomes, not micro-manage processes
• Monitor and evaluate the performance of provincial departments of education to ensure equity in educational outcomes

We respectfully request Provincial Departments of Education to:

• Exercise the powers that are due to them for an efficient and effective administration of schools so that our children receive services that suit their specific needs.
• Determine minimum levels of nutritional and cognitive, physical, and psycho-social development for children in consultation with national authorities and ensure that no child is left behind.