National schools, provincial schools, and international schools: A state-consented neo-caste system

by Lokubanda Tillakaratne

News of outrageous and probably questionable horizontal distribution of close to 900 million rupees from the President’s Fund to factions of politicians for supposed medical treatment brought back memories of disappointment after the explanation I received from the President’s Office in March 2024 when I called to see whether it could give  two million rupees to my school of 200 students in Maradankalla, in the Galenbindunuwewa Education Zone, to build a 20ft x20ft small pavilion on its playground.  Section 6 of the President’s Fund Act No. 7 of 1978 allows the distribution of funding for ‘education or knowledge.’

I called after seeing a copy of a letter issued by the President’s office in December 2023 addressed to an Armed Service Head notifying him of releasing a check for 24 million rupees to build a swimming pool at a national school.

When my call got through, the person I spoke to told me that the President’s office funded only National Schools (NS), and smaller village schools, like mine, must contact the Governor of the Province for funds.

CASTE QUARTET OF OUR EDUCATION AND HISTORY

The President’s Office fund distribution practice has proved that we have an asymmetric support mechanism and education they dispense in our schools. The Ministry of Education and BOI are directing three different systems rooted in an Urban-Rural divide to educate our children. They are NSs, the PSs, i.e., rural, the mushrooming International School business (IS), and the business arm of education—the Tuition class pantheon.

This practice mimics the reviled caste systems that controlled Sri Lankan society until the mid-20th century.  This thought gave me a jolt and conjured back a time way back when cold, shameful caste was the norm of the day.  As a boy in the early 1950s, I remember a 6’ 8″ giant of a gentle, grandfatherly man from a neighbouring lower caste village, removing his headscarf and stepping aside on the tank bund and standing still until a group of chattering boys from this supposedly ‘higher caste’ village walked past him.

According to historian K. M. De Silva, in the 1880s, Charles Bruce, the Director of Education, argued that primary education of the village child must equip him for the “humble career which ordinarily lies before them.” The Bruce Education Code at the time imposed high tuition fees in English and Anglo-Vernacular schools to make it a barrier and challenging for those less elitist sections in the society to learn English.  Limiting English education access then to village children was the policy, and it had defenders. J. P. Obeysekere, Sinhalese Representative in the Legislative Council, supported the Bruce Education Code, stating “that the children of the rural poor would be (then) forced to follow such avocations as they are fitted for by nature.”  By not advancing the education of rural kids, if we are thinking of creating a labour force to work in the fields only to produce rice to feed the nation, then the present story must change to stop it from drifting back to the wrong side of history.

 FAR APART MAKEUP OF THE QUARTET

This caste discussion embodies three different types of schools – NS, PS (Village Schools), and IS. These schools differ on an urban-rural divide, emulating past caste dynamics I mentioned.  A village school does not have an influential past pupils’ Association, a characteristic, among other things, enshrined in the preamble in elevating a school to national status. Meanwhile, half a dozen parents form a School Development Committee to lobby for their children in a village school silently.  The NS Past Pupils’ groups work with an all-out fervor on behalf of the school.

Schools and learning are two distinct things.  They can be physically bigger or smaller, some with wrought iron gates with finials standing as sentinels between crenelated parapet walls representing glamour and fame. In the village school, the gate is for entry and exit and to prevent grazing cows from entering the schoolyard. But learning is the soul of any school. Therefore, it demands both school systems – NS and PS – to foster learning on equal terms, adhering to a one-size-fits-all motto.

Contrary to the PSs, NS never had a problem attracting teachers. Teachers come with vested interests and incentives, such as the privilege of admitting their kids to school (which I have no problem with), and economic opportunities associated with after-school private tuition.

It is puzzling that the same students they teach during school hours become their paying customers in the bustling warehouse-like evening tuition class, an uncontrolled monster eating into parents’ pockets. Indeed, I applaud the Western Province PC for identifying this vulgarity and becoming the bellwether to stop teachers’ after-school tuition practice.

 NS facilities are top-of-the-line.  Its computer lab is air-tight, climate-controlled 24/7, and built as a showpiece right as you enter the school.  Former Presidents have graced them at the opening to earn political capital. Meanwhile, my village school has a small computer room; half of the computers are inoperative; there is no A/C to inject life into the remaining few.

Many NSs pride themselves in having a swimming pool, ICC-standard cricket pitches, and a playground with finery of manicured grass with sprinklers showering it with intervals of atomic accuracy.  A couple of groundskeepers work diligently searching for pale-coloured turf to replace. Its pavilion is a treat to the eye. Political royalty and princely educators assemble here annually to enjoy the inter-house sports meet.

Meanwhile, in my village school, the playground is a poor child.  Seasonal rain comes to sprinkle it.  There are no groundskeepers here.  Parents volunteer to trim the grass at the beginning of each term. Elephant droppings of various stages of healing are all over the effaced track.  Teachers stand under the shade of teak trees along the barbed-wire fence as students run laps. There is no roofed structure on the playground for them to rest. The closest we have as a roofed structure here are two linear illustrations of a four-page blueprint for a ‘pavilion’, which I brought to the attention of the President’s Office without success.

We wrote to the Governor of the Province with this plan in March 2023 but have not received a response yet.

I am now trying what President Anura Kumara Dissanayake recently observed—looking to see if there is someone I know in the Governor’s Office!

What I write next may not be pretty.  My school has two precious latrines for students, embellished with aged squatting pans, one of which has broken edges. The pits are packed to the brim and graciously continue to be receptive to the squatting pan output. The concrete slab inside one latrine is peeling off in a few places.  In the three small schools around my village, only Kahapathwilagama (over 100 years old) and Wellaragama are open for business, but they have the same caste title––the PS.  Unfortunately, the nearby Ihalagama school was abandoned over a decade ago. After the jungle had overtaken its buildings, herds of Mahakanadarawa elephants now take turns using them for night school.

Such is the background I called the President’s Office for help. Although countless provincial education officials have visited these schools, they seem oblivious or helpless to resolve these shortcomings. The officials have not considered upgrading the playground because they have many vital issues and probably funding difficulties. Furthermore, a few principals told me they would not want to bother the provincial hierarchy for fear of being labelled a nuisance.

International schools making education for profit business

Nearly 150 years later, J.P. Obeyesekeres of the world have their wish granted in the form of the International School phenomenon, replicating the memory politics of the Bruce Education Code.

Among my neo-caste quartet, IS competes intensely with rural students whose English and other subject proficiency is generally regarded as below average.  Against this backdrop, in the context of securing well-paying jobs, international school students stand a better chance of representing their caste well.

Past governments have colluded with the Bureau of Investment (BOI) by interpreting secondary education as a business and approved the wholesale International School concept. This action contravenes the provisions of the Assisted Schools and Training Colleges (Supplementary Provisions) Act No. 8 of 1961, which requires that no person other than the Director of Education can establish a school for children between the ages of five and 14.

  IS system is not under the oversight of the Ministry of Education but is allowed to take O/L and A/L exams with regular school students or equivalent tests offered by overseas agencies or schools. Now, they are popping up in towns like Grocery outlets.   The Ministry did not study detrimental consequences and the competition they generated on PS students. Now, I see this idea has morphed into an impediment instead of an investment to equalize the cadence of these two learning environments.

Not all children who study in IS end up in foreign universities. Those who don’t then enter the local job market with English language eloquence plumaged on their caps. The inveterate disposition of employers towards the English articulation of prospective applicants makes it easy to take the first look at the plumaged candidates.  Rural school candidates with a smattering of English-speaking skills get the adieu.

Without increased English-medium education opportunities, employment, or academic opportunities for the village school students decrease in inverse proportion to the distance as the school gets farther and farther from the city.  If authorities do not address this imbalance soon, students without adequate English proficiency, i.e., rural students, will become irrevocably irrelevant.

However, English medium education is an indispensable idea in the present day and age. We need a reliable workforce with good English command to court foreign investors to bring their capital. I am concerned about the government’s inaction to bring this environment to rural schools.  It has failed to recognize that such student preparation is a form of export stimulating an increase of inbound investment in the country.  Let us add village schools’ kids to this export market, too.

After the 1956 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike’s ‘Sinhala Only’ debacle, it took decades for the English language to become a factor in our children’s education. Then, in the early 21st century, President Chandrika Bandaranayake, S.W.R.D.’s daughter, proposed making English medium instruction in rural schools.  However, that idea withered away sadly, leading us to the present discussion. It is encouraging and applausive that some National Schools offer English medium classes now.

Still, the PSs do not have access to such advancements yet; perhaps the education bigwigs think that those children are 5th-Grade exam failures and are not up to the challenge, or there are not enough English teachers to teach.  Indeed, the latter may be accurate, but a positive sign is that the aptness of the 5th-Grade aptitude test has become the subject of discussion among educators.  I know that 5th-Grade testing should not be considered an inflection point in an ‘Other School’ child’s education.  I failed that exam in 1963.

(To be continued)