by Anton Peiris ,

Emeritus Coordinator, International Baccalaureate

Goolbai Gunasekera has written a very good article: ‘A return to the English Medium of Instruction in schools is desperately   needed’.

I wish to take on from where Goolbai Gunasekera has left.

The goal that she has proposed is laudable, but it will take a very long time to achieve it. i.e. to teach several subjects in the English medium in all schools. There is a terrific shortage of Trained English Teachers and there is a shortage of Textbooks. So we need to be realistic.

Prof. Nicola Perera ( Department of English Language teaching, Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo ) has stated the following in The Island of 06 June, 2021 :

‘’ In the first few weeks of class, the undergraduates speak of the social inequalities of free education in Sri Lanka : We never had an English teacher at all or only intermittently. There weren’t enough textbooks to go around. The English teacher seemed befuddled : read out the textbook ; came to class and didn’t teach ; engaged in other work .

The students were reliant on the classroom to learn a language they did not speak at home. They came to University from under-resourced schools that had too few English teachers, poorly trained or with no training at all and poorly paid ‘’.

The National Curriculum Framework document published by our Ministry of Education states that English Language education should have the following objectives :

‘’ Students to be taught to speak well and to convey ideas confidently, to have a good vocabulary, to ask questions and to reason, i.e. to gain command over the English language in terms of reading, writing and spoken language ‘’.

Very good, but it cannot happen in the vast majority of secondary schools in provincial and rural areas due to the shortage of Trained English Teachers, Textbooks, etc.

So what is the solution ? We need to embark on something that is feasible given the lack of finances ( both Dollars and Rupees) in Sri Lanka. The aim should be to make English a compulsory subject for all students. It will take some time, but we should make a start now and make a determined effort.

1 We need more and more Trained English Teachers.

There is a need to establish a few more teacher training colleges to train English teachers. Sri Lanka cannot do this alone. We need the help of countries like the U.K., Australia and Canada and some help from UNESCO.

In Sri Lanka, the salaries of teachers are low. It is an important reason why qualified people are not attracted to the teaching profession. It is unrealistic to expect any salary increases for teachers. Given the pathetic situation that exists in the teaching of English in provincial and rural schools, other avenues should be explored in order to improve the quality of teaching.

There should be incentives for A / Level qualified students to enroll in Teacher Training Colleges to become English Teachers. I am thinking of students who have passed the A / Level in two or three subjects but did not qualify to enter University.  Suggestion : make it a three year full time training course, and when they obtain the Diploma, put them on a salary scale which is superior to that of a two-year trained teacher but slightly inferior to that of a university graduate.

We know that the standard of English of a student who has passed the O / Level English Exam is very low. Goolbai Gunasekera has quoted from a WhatsApp message that she received from a student who has passed O / Level in English Language when she enquired how the girl was doing in Kuwait : ‘’  yers madam iam gud  ‘’. The same is true for A / Level qualified students because they have studied in the sinhala medium.

The first year in the Training College should be an intensive course in learning English to the exclusion of everything else, i.e. to gain command over the English language in terms of reading, writing and spoken language.  During the second and third years, it should be the usual psychology, pedagogy, methodology, etc., plus further training in English, including a bit of English Literature, and also taking part in Drama, Debating,etc. That will ensure the delivery of properly trained English teachers to our provincial and rural schools.

2 . We need to provide millions of our students with the English Textbooks.

At the moment Sri Lanka does not have even the paper to print Textbooks. We need financial help from developed countries in order to provide our students with the books. The Minister of Education should not hesitate to ask countries like the U.K., Australia,Canada,Sweden , Switzerland , Finland , Japan and also UNICEF for help. Ask and you shall receive. 

3 .  We need to involve the media in this effort to improve the standard of English of our students in the provincial and rural areas

. Get all our TV stations to broadcast Daily Lessons in the evenings and  weekends on ‘ How to Learn English ‘ beamed at our Secondary students. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw boys and girls from poor families sitting on rooftops and tops of trees and trying to follow Online Lessons. Many of them have smartphones and this can be used to advantage to teach English.

After doing a lot of research and spending a lot of time and energy, Ministry of Education has published a 52-page document, titled  ‘’National Curriculum Framework For General Education In Sri Lanka ‘’ in November 2020. It is a very good document. One of its objectives:

‘’ Students should gain command over the English language in terms of reading, writing and spoken language” ‘’.

This document lists dozens of Objectives but nothing has happened during the last 20 months and it is gathering dust somewhere in the Ministry. This reminds me of something that the first Minister of Finance, in independent Ceylon (J. R. Jayawardena) stated in Parliament in 1948 :  ‘’ It is possible to Plan without Developing as is possible to Develop without Planning ‘’. Time has come to forget about Planning and to make a determined effort to solve a few problems, including the need to make our Secondary Students proficient in English.

The Minister of Education should ask the Sri Lankan Diaspora to contribute some Dollars to Fund a Project aimed at improving the standard of English in our provincial and rural Secondary schools. e.g. to provide the textbooks, to improve the facilities in Teacher Training Colleges by installing modern Audio Visual equipment to teach English, to buy books for the Library, etc. There is more than a quarter million Sri Lankans working or retired in the U.K., Europe, Canada, the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand and all of them have benefitted from the Free Education that they received in Sri Lanka including University Education. I live in Switzerland and I am one of them. We have a duty to give back something to Sri Lanka in its needy hour. Please start a Fund and I will send a contribution of US Dollars 500 as soon as the Bank Account for the Fund is established. We are disappointed that our Prime Minister / Minister of Finance has not asked for our help. In 1969 Sri Lanka had a severe shortage of Dollars and our former Finance Minister ( Dr. N. M. Perera ) appealed to the Sri Lankans working abroad for help. At that time there were only a couple of thousand Sri Lankans living abroad and the response was only fairly satisfactory. Now there is more than a quarter million of them, there is a better chance and the Minister should try.

Why do parents spend a lot of money to send their children to International Schools ? It is because they will learn sufficient English ( and mathematics in the English medium ) to get through the London O/Level exams in those two subjects. That will open many doors for them and those children will have the chance of getting a good job or the ability to study abroad. So a very small minority of students in Sri Lanka become proficient in English and successive governments have ignored the vast majority of our students. It is time to make an effort to rectify this situation.

( The writer has taught O / Level and A / Level mathematics and physics in Sri Lanka, Kenya and Switzerland ).

anton25ps@gmail.com