Opinion
Instructors of English, and their positioning in ELTDs

and the wider context of Higher Education
by Ashanthi Ekanayake
The devalued or undervalued role of the English instructor, which has a certain gendered aspect as women outnumber men, and as it is generally perceived as a category, deserves some consideration.
As an Instructor of English, I want this to read like the personal account it is, but I also want it to have some depth and validity as it is an exercise which seeks answers to the questions of systemic injustices and inequities and inequalities we face as professions, and explore the question of how we might overcome the oppression and gain a semblance of agency, though we remain a small group.
To start where my journey began, after a brief stint at the Department of Classical Languages after graduation in the obligatory position of temporary lecturer, I was gratified when I obtained a position as a permanent instructor in April of 2004. When I first discussed my prospects as an Instructor of English with my friend’s mother, whom I thought of as a role model, as she was not just a mom but also an accomplished academic of some renown, she said, “ell if you want to bring up a family and also engage in a profession, this is a good one.
” Warning bells should have rung then, but I then went ahead and secured myself a position. The second time I would hear something about how an English Instructor was generally perceived was when a senior academic, whom I looked up to, made a tongue in cheek comment. “Well,” he said ponderously, “the ELTU was at one point seen as a place for wives, girlfriends and mistresses of academics.” That gave me a very clear indication of how my profession and its category stood in comparison to the others in the University.
Yet I remained quite impervious, until I made the mistake of introducing myself as a “lecturer” to an academic of the medical faculty. He did not mince words in disabusing me of my misperception of my standing in the wider university community. Thereafter I would introduce myself very succinctly as an instructor of English to all and sundry and the be caught up in an explanation of where exactly my position fitted in the university system, a difficult endeavour at the best of times, which turned out to be demeaning to boot, because we were it appeared neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.
But why am I giving unnecessary history and personal history at that? Well sometimes the personal is the universal, so bear with me, I promise not to disappoint you.
I continued on my merry-way working in many of the ELTUs of the university of Peradeniya, and became aware of the many systemic injustices, inequities and inequalities that is part and parcel of the experience. The differences and imparities operated on multiple levels but then I was just biding my time. I was not sure what I was waiting for, but I was busy making a living, working, attempting to become qualified, becoming a parent so on and so forth, basically doing everything a mother and a professional does.
As the most junior member of the permanent staff, I did not see how I was going to change the situation anytime soon. Meanwhile, a promotional scheme had come into effect and gone and many things had happened. I was impervious and had been too busy complaining about being underpaid, exploited and undervalued. Things were changing and I was finding some of these changes and my experiences difficult to grapple with.
Like many positions in the system, mine had no clear job description. There was that frightening clause at the end of my letter of appointment, I was to perform “any and all duties” as directed by my head of department. I was safe while my HoD was fair and human, and the demands being made did not appear at least on the surface unfair. My workload according to my grade was between 14 to 16 contact teaching hours, spread across the five-day working week, except during the intensives when one would teach for longer hours. Still tolerable. So, one continued.
Then, I became aware of a few things. Most academics and many in the non-academic staff, took it as a given that we were of a lower category, and came lower in the pecking order. They would on occasion become quite abusive. As a woman, I was made to feel extremely vulnerable because I was not aware of the system and its intricacies and the apparatuses and mechanisms available for my/ our protection. To use a posh term, I was not aware of my positioning and my sense of agency within the system. To add to this one of my supervisors were given to saying that we as a group were too empowered. Was that such a bad thing? Empowerment meant that we were able to carry out duties in a healthy environment.
Recently, when I spoke of the agency available to me, as an instructor, or lack thereof to a colleague in the temporary cadre, 20 years my junior, recruited having graduated recently, guffawed snidely. Thus, the notion of agency is a concept necessarily denied to those in our category. On occasion, we were treated with extreme violence and derision at august fora such as the faculty boards.
On one instance a colleague complained to me of a colleague of a different category, throwing her out of a classroom and then gesturing towards her attire, and asking if she was indeed a teacher. Many of our rights, and freedoms are circumscribed and the situation it appears will not improve anytime soon. A case in point is the finger scanner attendance system.
Recently, a now discredited academic turned politician who was removed and subsequently reinstated into a certain state committee added to our burdens and we now mark our attendance through the finger scanner system. This is something which has given rise to many disparities within and across the system. His main concern was that there was no proof of the services we had provided, so we now mark attendance which in no way provides evidence about the volume and extent of the work we do. Now, we have a work load and a work day we are constrained in multiple ways. When we ask about how exactly it is implemented, we are not given straightforward answers. A senior colleague asked if our work day was 8.00 am to 4.00 pm, the official to whom the question was posed glibly answered, “I didn’t say that.”
This has given rise to the question of job descriptions and role definitions. According to certain officials, we have not been defined as being teachers. Only lecturers are considered academics and they are exempt from marking attendance as it goes against “tradition.” The most glaring injustice is that our workload and work norms match those of the academic cadre, we have the same qualifications from the same places but not only is our pay lower but the demands made are unjust in the extreme. For an instance, we do not receive research allowances of the sort academics receive but certain ELTDs insist on research.
During intensive courses instructors are forced to work longer hours, on occasion starting sessions at 8.00am and going on until 4.00pm. We are seen largely as beasts of burden. An instance of when we face additional unfairness is when services are commandeered for editing content in (not copy editing/proofreading) research articles and abstracts when the actual appointed the editors according to the publication are others. Those whose duty it is to perform this function send stringent guidelines about editing the research articles and palm off their duties on the English instructors. They receive a commendation and have their names mentioned in the volume as editors. The instructors only receive a letter of acknowledgement of the service performed.
Many Units have now been upgraded to departments so now we have ELTDs and not ELTUs. Thus, there are lecturers in the equation and the differences and inequalities are manifold and magnified at close quarters. The appointed paper setter is an academic but the paper comes to be set by an instructor. In one faculty of the University of Peradeniya, payment vouchers do not mention the academic support category at all.
To add to these injustices on occasion we are left out of certain other benefits of being in the university system, such as the vaccination scheme for university staff.
The webpage of the ELTD of the University of Peradeniya mentions no less person than Theodoric de Souza as its founding Head albeit of the sub department. Who was he? A well-known figure in Bolshevik/Marxian (quaint term found in early articles) trade union action among many other things. Interestingly, the author had a very close call, with the term Bolshevik being included in a reading text as it was a term that Arts Faculty students are “apparently” not aware of. Would “Doric” turn in his grave at this turn of events? Would he be appalled at the way we are being treated. He apparently had keen sense of fair-play and justice according to Jeanette Cabraal, (13th March 2014: Daily Mirror).
Even women academics, aware of feminist ideals and values will on occasion behave in a way which prompts one to question if they indeed practice what they preach. Some of us have Stockholm syndrome we side with our abusers because they have complete control over us and they say this is the best thing for you. This is seen also in a comment made by a senior academic about their relations with the ELTD of their own university at a workshop in the author’s hearing. “Oh! now they have achieved academic status we leave them to their own mad devices. In our opinion they are mad and when they don’t agree with our viewpoint, we drag them by their hair in the direction we want them to go.” This comment was made in 2014.
What if you protest, then you become an upstart and a misfit, your own see you as a scapegoat and blame everything they cannot change about their own situation on that unworthy individual and try their best to oust the person out of the system. They project certain personal traits on that person which are seen as unacceptable and run the individual out with abusive behaviour.
If an institution is truly committed to improving the learning and teaching of English, we need to be aware of these aspects of our profession. So, where to Instructors of English?
Opinion
British PM Starmer’s vain attempt to defend Reeves

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ tax-hiking budget prompted criticism from businesses and farmers, and despite Labour pledging to boost the economy at the centre of its plans, growth has been sluggish. Now the chancellor is facing questions about whether she exaggerated her experience on her online CV and her use of expenses while working in the banking sector before she became an MP.
Her career at HBOS has come under scrutiny, after the BBC revealed that Reeves and two colleagues were the subject of an expenses probe while she was a senior manager at the bank. The initial stage of the HBOS investigation found that a whistleblower’s complaint was substantiated, and the three employees appeared to have broken the rules, according to a senior source with direct knowledge of the probe. The BBC has not been able to establish what the final outcome of the investigation was and it might not have concluded.
A spokesman for Reeves said the chancellor had no knowledge of the investigation, always complied with expenses rules and left the bank on good terms. A spokesman for Reeves said the chancellor had no knowledge of the investigation, always complied with expenses rules and left the bank on good terms. A spokesman for Reeves confirmed that dates on her LinkedIn were inaccurate and blamed an administrative error by the team.
Last year, her LinkedIn profile was also changed to describe her role at HBOS as “Retail Banking”. It had previously claimed she worked as an economist at the bank, but she instead held a management role in the bank’s customer relations department, which dealt with complaints. Entering Parliament in 2010, an early mentor on economic policy was Alistair Darling – the last Labour chancellor, during the financial crisis.
She quickly rose up the party’s ranks, shadowing roles at the Treasury, Work and Pensions, and the Cabinet Office.
Throughout Jeremy Corbyn’s four and a half years as Labour leader, she remained on the backbenches because she felt she could not endorse his policies. Called a “Red Tory” by some in the party, she described this as a “very unpleasant period” in an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson.
In October 2023, she admitted she “should have done better” after it emerged some passages in her book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, had been lifted from other sources without acknowledgment. She told the BBC some sentences “were not properly referenced” and this would be corrected in future reprints.
Last July, Reeves became the country’s first female chancellor and quickly faced what she described as “tough choices”.
She claimed a “black hole” in the nation’s finances meant winter fuel payments would have to be cut for millions of pensioners and National Insurance hiked for employers.
Despite Labour’s attempts to win over businesses during the election campaign, many were disappointed they bore the brunt of the £40bn in tax rises announced in her first Budget. Before winning power, Reeves promised she would govern with “iron discipline” and bring stability to the public finances, leading to comparisons with Conservative “Iron Chancellor” Margaret Thatcher.
On Friday, Reeves was asked about the expenses claims directly. She said: “No-one ever raised any concerns about my expenses when I worked for Halifax Bank of Scotland.” She said her expenses had been “signed off in the proper way” and “no issues were ever raised” during her time at the bank.
Her expenses were signed off by her manager, who was also one of the three employees who were the subject of the expenses probe. Reeves left the bank in May 2009, as did her boss. The other senior manager was on sick leave in May and never returned to work at the bank. There is no suggestion any of the departures were linked to the investigation or spending issues and a spokesman for Reeves said the chancellor left the bank on good terms. Reeves has accepted the findings of another part of our investigation, this time over her CV. We established that the chancellor had exaggerated the length of time she worked at the Bank of England. The BBC News investigation revealed that concerns were raised about Reeves’s expenses while working at HBOS between 2006 and 2009. A detailed six-page whistleblowing complaint was submitted, with dozens of pages of supporting documents including emails, receipts and memos.
The complaint led to an internal investigation by the bank’s risk department.
This was passed to internal audit, which reviewed the allegations and concluded that they were substantiated and there appeared to be evidence of wrongdoing by Reeves and her two colleagues, according to a senior source with direct knowledge of the investigation. What we have not been able to establish is what happened next and whether the bank ever reached a formal conclusion.
On Friday, Science Secretary Peter Kyle told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the reporting was “inaccurate”.
Both he and Siobhain McDonagh, a Labour MP who appeared on BBC’s Politics Live on Thursday, raised comments by a former HR manager, Jane Wayper – which, they said, disproved the BBC News’s story.
Wayper spoke to the BBC after being given permission to do so by Reeves’s team.
She provided an on-the-record statement which said she “would have been made aware of any investigation which concluded there was a case to answer” on the basis that she “would have been required to organise and oversee a disciplinary process”. However, the BBC has not reported that the case reached a formal conclusion, or that there was disciplinary action. Kyle incorrectly claimed that the quote had not been included in our report – but it had been in the article since it was first published on Thursday morning. He also incorrectly referred to Wayper as the head of HR at the bank. In reality she was an HR business partner working in the department where Reeves worked. On Friday, Reeves was asked about the expenses claims directly. She said: “No-one ever raised any concerns about my expenses when I worked for Halifax Bank of Scotland.” She said her expenses had been “signed off in the proper way” and “no issues were ever raised” during her time at the bank. Her expenses were signed off by her manager, who was also one of the three employees who were the subject of the expenses probe. Reeves left the bank in May 2009, as did her boss. The other senior manager was on sick leave in May and never returned to work at the bank. There is no suggestion any of the departures were linked to the investigation or spending issues and a spokesman for Reeves said the chancellor left the bank on good terms. We established that the chancellor had exaggerated the length of time she worked at the Bank of England. Reeves has often said she spent the “best part of a decade” working at the bank when setting out her credentials to run the economy to voters.
However, her LinkedIn profile said she only worked there for six years – from September 2000 to December 2006. A year of that time was spent studying at the London School of Economics (LSE).
The BBC has now established that Reeves left the Bank of England in March 2006, meaning the time she spent working there amounts to five and a half years. A spokesman for Reeves confirmed that dates on her LinkedIn were inaccurate and said it was due to an administrative error by the team. Her profile on the social media site has since been updated.
Shame on both the Prime Minister & the Chancellor!!
Sunil Dharmabandhu
Wales, UK
Opinion
Wasting time at channelling centres: A call for change

Visiting a channelling centre should be a straightforward process—book an appointment, arrive on time, see the doctor, and leave with a treatment plan. Unfortunately, the reality is far from this ideal, as I recently experienced firsthand.
I accompanied a friend of mine who had an appointment with a specialist at a well-known channelling centre (CC). The doctor was scheduled to begin consultations at 6:30 AM, and his appointment was number seven (7), with an assigned time of 6:35 AM. Simple calculations revealed that the doctor would have had to examine six patients in just five minutes—a timeline that seemed neither practical nor fair to those in need of thorough medical attention. Wanting to be considerate, we estimated that at least five minutes should be spent per patient and arrived at the centre at 7:00 AM. To our disappointment, we were informed by the receptionist that the doctor had not yet arrived.
By that time, around twenty people were waiting, ten of whom were visibly unwell and could have been patients. A particularly frustrated patient mentioned that on his previous visit, the same doctor had arrived two hours late. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that the doctor, scheduled to start his consultations at 6:30 AM, was in fact performing surgical operations at another hospital at that time. If such commitments were known in advance, why was his channelling session scheduled for an impossible hour? Why does the channelling centre assign specific times that have no relation to actual consultation times?
This issue is not confined to a single doctor or one particular CC—it is a systemic problem that affects countless patients nationwide. The lack of proper scheduling and coordination leads to unnecessary delays, causing immense distress to those who are already suffering.
Moreover, the infrastructure at these centres is equally inadequate. Parking facilities are either non-existent or located far from the premises, while doctors enjoy reserved spots. The irony is that the very people who need the service—the patients—are left in discomfort and frustration.
This situation demands urgent attention. Channelling centres, doctors and the Ministry of Health must work together to create a more humane and efficient system that respects patients’ time and well-being. Simple adjustments, such as realistic scheduling, improved communication, and better patient facilities, could make a world of difference.
After all, roles are interchangeable—today’s doctor might be tomorrow’s patient. It is time to rethink and reform the system to benefit all involved.
I would say these small but essential changes too would lead to a “Lassana Lanka”.
D R
Opinion
In Loving memory of our Seeya – Late Mr W P Upasena

Its been a year since you left us, and while the pain of your absence remains, so too does the warmth of your memory. There is not a day that goes by where we don’t think of you.
We are deeply grateful for the love, wisdom, and kindness you shared with us all. Your unwavering support, gentle guidance, selflessness, and extensive knowledge left an incredible mark on everyone who knew you. You were not only the cornerstone of our family but also a source of inspiration for all who crossed your path.
As we gather to honor your life, we extend our heartfelt thanks to friends, family, and well-wishers who have supported us over the past year. Your love, and kind words have been a source of strength and comfort during this journey.
Though you are no longer with us in person, Seeya you continue to live on in our hearts and through the values you instilled in us. We will continue to honor your life by cherishing each other and carrying forward your legacy of love, compassion, and integrity.
May you attain the supreme bliss of Nirvana, Seeya.
Fondly remembered by:
Achchi, Loving Children & Grandchildren
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