The Island - By Eric J. de Silva
The government recently announced that 1000 schools will be developed island-wide to provide high quality education to children in rural areas without their having to seek admission to the so-called popular schools located in urban centres, after passing the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination or other such entrance tests. Referring to this proposal in his recent budget speech, H.E. the President said that 1000 well-equipped secondary schools will be developed over a period of 5 years, and that each one of them will be linked to a number of primary schools. He added that "the required funding of Rs. 15 billion has been mobilized from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank". This is no small amount of money (there will obviously be other expenditures to be met from the national budget too), not to forget the fact that WB and ADB provide only loans, though on concessionary terms, and do not give outright gifts like many people tend to believe.
Read moreWhile welcoming the government’s decision to provide centres of excellence away from the main urban centres like the late Mr. C.W.W. Kannangara did, we have to be mindful of the fact that there have been a series of similar projects in the past that have not produced the desired results. We need to find out what went wrong with these projects and avoid repeating past mistakes if we are to get value for money as the President (who is also the Finance Minister) would surely expect.
If we take our minds back to 1992, President Premadasa’s government launched what was known as the Improvement of Schools by Division (ISD) Project in response to the recommendation made by the Youth Commission (1991) that a fully equipped junior secondary school be set up in each AGA’s Division and a fully equipped senior secondary school be set up per every 5 AGA’s Divisions making a total of 448 (373 junior secondary and 75 senior secondary) schools to overcome the ‘kolombata kiri, apata kekiri’ syndrome which was creating disaffection among rural youth who formed the backbone of the two JVP insurrections.
The Peoples’ Alliance which took over the reins of government after the General Elections of 1994 launched its own project in place of the ISD Project calling it the Development of Schools by Division (DSD) Project. This new project was intended to cover the period 1995-2000. In a letter addressed to MPs requesting them to nominate 2 schools each for the new project, Education Minister Richard Pathirana explained its purpose as providing 2 schools in every AGA’s Division with all the physical and human resources needed "to reduce the current pressure on the popular schools in the country and to support the provision of equal opportunities to everyone". An official document of the Ministry of Education went on to say that once the project is completed, these schools will be centres of excellence with all the necessary facilities for any level and any stream of education. (As far as I am aware, very few ISD schools, if at all, were among the schools selected for development under the DSD project.)
It would surprise many to hear that at the end of the project period (i.e. year 2000), the Education Ministry found that the DSD schools had failed to reach a level of excellence good enough to attract children at least at Grade 1 level, leave aside Grade 5. This resulted in the Ministry picking 134 schools from amongst them, giving them a new name as Navodya schools and putting them on what it called a "fast tack" to get them ready for students seeking admission to Grade 1 by 2002. About a year later, the Ministry claimed that the 134 ‘fast track’ schools had been upgraded, and that work on the remaining DSD schools would begin very soon. In the meantime, the number of DSD/Navodya schools kept on increasing and reached 397 by 2003 showing how quantity far outpaces quality in a highly politicized system such as ours.
What is important for us to note is that between the ISD and DSD/Navodya projects, an enormous amount of money had been spent in the name of developing centres of excellence in various parts of the country to provide equal opportunities to rural children. Unfortunately, however, the Ministry of Education was able to identify only 22 DSD/Navodya schools in October 2003 as having shown any remarkable improvement, despite all the money spent. During the years that followed further expenditures were incurred on these schools under World Bank/ADB loans as well as the national budget in the name of reducing "the yawning chasm between the town and the country" that the Youth Commission talked about, with very little results to show.
It was not without reason, therefore, that Dr. Sarath Amunugama (who has held about half a dozen portfolios since he was appointed Minister of Education in the short–lived ‘parivasa’ government of 2001) said in November 2006 as Minister of Public Administration in the UPFA government that "somebody has to take a very hard look at education, health and social welfare in this country. We are just throwing good money after bad and there are no results". (Daily Mirror – Financial Times, 07/11/06).
In the same month of November 2006, the cabinet approved an allocation of Rs.7340 million for the development of what were described as ‘Isuru’ (from Navodya to Isuru!) schools in five years, on a memorandum submitted by the then Minister of Education, Hon. Susil Premajayantha (vide Information Department press release which appeared in The Island of 11/11/06). The targeted number of schools was 327 on the basis of one per Division, and these were to be "fully developed" to quote the words in the press release. What has come out of this Isuru project is not known although the five year period is drawing to an end, and the government would do well to "take a very hard look" at what it has been able to achieve.
In an article written to The Island MWR way back in 2001 (Central Schools and their revival – a different viewpoint - 06/06/2001), I drew attention to the fact that between the ISD and DSD projects, billions of rupees had been spent in the name of developing centres of excellence in rural areas and providing equal opportunities in education. I asked: "Has the Ministry of Education or the National Institute of Education made any assessment of the outcome of these projects? Have the budget authorities and our planners who often talk about cost-effectiveness and returns to investment bothered to find out what these colossal investments in selected schools have brought in? Anyone who has even a cursory look at the expenditures incurred under these projects will not fail to observe the rank disregard shown for concerns of cost and economy in the expenditure of public funds." It is indeed sad that the same questions have now to be asked about the Isuru Schools Project for which a sum of Rs. 7340 million was allocated in 2006. The government needs to find the answers to prevent its new Project also going the same way!
Let us not forget that there is a recipe for success left behind for us by that great man, the late C.W.W. Kannangara, which we can profitably follow if we are serious about establishing centres of excellence through the length and breadth of the country at much less cost. The strategies that he followed have been documented by many, and have been briefly dealt with by me too in my contribution to The Island in June 2001, referred to above.
