Wednesday 1st January, 2025

The Supreme Court (SC) has delivered its much-awaited verdict in a fundamental rights case pertaining to the leak of three questions in the first paper of the 2024 Grade Five Scholarship Examination (GFSE); the award of free marks has led to a violation of fundamental rights, the apex court has ruled, ordering that a solution be adopted in keeping with the recommendations of an expert committee appointed to study the issue, which triggered a public outcry. The SC decision is most welcome, and one can only hope that it will be carried out expeditiously. The education authorities must not be allowed to find simple solutions to serious problems which come about due to their lapses.

Question paper leaks adversely impact the integrity of the examinations held by the Department of Examinations (DoE), as is obvious, and therefore everything possible must be done to prevent them and ensure that deterrent punishment is meted out to the perpetrators of examination rackets. We suggest that new laws be introduced to impose severe forms of punishment like long jail terms and heavy g fines for such offences.

Besides, in this day and age, technology plays a central role in our lives, and the DoE must be equipped to meet emerging challenges effectively. The Government Printing Department and the Police came under cyberattacks yesterday. This points to the growing vulnerability of key state institutions. The National Medicines Regulatory Authority suffered a massive data loss due to a cybercrime.

The phenomenal growth of the shadow education sector, which is full of unscrupulous wealthy private tutors who are ready to do anything to achieve the goal of ‘producing best results’ has rendered the DoE even more vulnerable. Hence the pressing need for it to adopt extraordinary measures to ensure the integrity of the competitive examinations it conducts. It should be provided with all required resources to protect itself. However, the examination question leaks at issue should not be allowed to eclipse the bigger picture in respect of the GFSE—the existence of popular and not-so-popular state-run schools and the painful struggle of the underprivileged students to gain admission to privileged schools.

An absurd solution to this problem has been suggested in some quarters—the scrapping of the GFSE! Such a course of action will deprive the underprivileged students of the only opportunity available for them to achieve their dream of entering popular schools. The ultimate solution, in our book, is to develop the underprivileged schools by eliminating the glaring urban bias in state expenditure on education so that poor children will not have to jump through the hoops to receive a good education, which opens opportunities in life.

This may be considered easier said than done, but it is a task that the JVP-led NPP government must strive to accomplish in keeping with its pledge to ensure equal opportunities to the people. After all, the JVP coined the pithy slogan, ‘kolombata kiri, gamata kekiri’ (‘milk for Colombo and melon/cucumber for the village’). That slogan, inter alia, enabled the JVP to mobilise the rural youth in their thousands for its second abortive uprising in the late 1980s.

Now that the JVP has gained state power with a mammoth majority in Parliament, it has to undertake the task of developing the underprivileged schools and provide the much-needed leg-up to the ordinary children.

Moreover, Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, has been an ardent advocate for increasing state expenditure on education. She was among the university dons who courageously took part in a long protest march organised by the FUTA (Federation of University Teachers’ Associations) in 2012, demanding that the state allocate 6% of GDP for education.

It is now up to the NPP bigwigs to translate their rhetoric into action and sort out the kiri-kekiri issue once and for all for the sake of underprivileged children. Let no excuses be trotted out.