Opinion
Reforming Higher Education
By Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
I have emerged from retirement twice in the last couple of months, on both occasions to speak at events organised by my former students at Sabaragamuwa University. On both occasions this happened soon after pronouncements about the need for reforms in education, by the Prime Minister first and now the President.
But nothing happens. Mahinda Rajapaksa was in power for nine years and failed to introduce the new Education and Higher Education Acts he pledged. Gotabaya has now been in power for 15 months and, admittedly, has had to deal with the Covid crisis. But there have been so signs of action in crucial areas, just general pronouncements about the prevailing mess.
In such a context, I feel some pride in the enormous amount I did in the one month I served as State Minister of Education. Nothing came of this since I resigned so soon, but after six years, during which nothing has moved, I thought I should set these down for the record. I hasten to note that this is not in the expectation that anyone in authority will take things forward because building on the past is anathema to politicians. But researchers in the future will find all this useful, when at some stage a study of what went wrong with education in Sri Lanka is written, on the lines of Jayasuriya’s seminal work about developments in the past.
I was appointed State Minister of Higher Education at the beginning of 2015. This was after Maithripala Sirisena became President, and I was a bit upset because he had pledged in his manifesto that leaders of parties supporting him would be in the Cabinet.
I told Maithripala I was disappointed that he had not kept his word to which, typically, he said that decisions had been made not by him but by Ranil Wickremesinghe and Chandrika Kumaratunga and I should speak to them. I told him I would do nothing of the sort, for I had supported him and not them, but I would accept the position since I thought I could work under him. At that stage there was no Cabinet Minister so I would have to report only to him.
But then Chandrika called me to tell me to dismiss the Chaiman of the UGC. When I refused, she said I should wait to see who was appointed on top of me. Soon enough Kabir Hashim was made Cabinet Minister of Higher Education.
I had no high opinion of his intellect or his capabilities and I called him to object. But he assured me that he knew nothing of the subject and would in any case be busy with the forthcoming election so would leave all decisions in my hands. I was foolish enough to believe him but within a couple of weeks he ordered the UGC Chairman to resign, claiming he had acted on Maithripala Sirisena’s instructions.
Maithripala denied this but I realised work would be impossible so I resigned and, though Maithripala said he would not accept my resignation, I said I would not withdraw unless I was made a Cabinet Minister. Kabir claimed he was happy about this, but Ranil and Chandrika were not, being more interested in their own agendas than the country. Ranil claimed in Parliament that I had not resigned, and when I expostulated he grinned and said triumphantly that my resignation had not been accepted. Obviously, he did not understand the Constitution but, with the bond scam having exploded, I decided enough was enough and crossed the floor of the house.
But before I resigned, I had initiated a number of programmes which no Minister of Higher Education would have dreamed of. I visited a university once a week to talk to students and staff of a particular faculty, and even inspected halls of residence, which astonished students. I also got my staff to engage in a similar visit to another university every week, for I felt we needed to know what was happening everywhere as soon as possible. And in addition, I had a meeting every week in the Ministry with yet another group of students.
In addition to developing close contacts with students, I also began work on a new Universities Act Mahinda Rajapaksa wanted to introduce one when he was President but it was then forgotten though a decent enough draft had been prepared. Indeed, I had told Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2014 that, unless he fulfilled his commitments, in particular with regard to new Education and Higher Education Acts, instead of having an early Presidential election, I could not support him.
I set up a Committee of two former Vice-Chancellors and a former College Director and, together with the Professor of Law at Colombo University, the thoughtful and thorough Sharya Scharagnuivel, we produced what I thought was a very good draft which covered all tertiary education. We had not finished when I vacated office but we worked from my home and I sent Kabir the draft and also passed it on to a successor when one was appointed after the Cabinet was expanded. But neither of them took any notice of this. As Malinda Seneviratne once put it, and confirmed this later in a television discussion, I had been the only Minister working in the first few months of Maithripala Sirisena’s government. The rest were only working towards the election that was imminent.
I also produced two Cabinet papers, which were ignored, including one to start a more comprehensive version of the GELT course. I had long been worried about the way the time of young people was wasted after they did their Ordinary Level examination in December. Advanced Levels did not begin till May at the earliest, and youngsters had nothing to do, which meant parents started to send them for tuition or they themselves got used to even worse practices.
I proposed then that in every division there should be afternoon classes in English and Mathematics. One reason given for substandard performances in these subjects was the paucity of teachers, but I had no doubt that there were enough good teachers to conduct make up classes in these subjects in at least one school in each Division. Something of the sort had happened during the GELT course and I knew well what was possible.
Such classes would be free of charge. And, though they would not be compulsory, the fact that they were available would have allowed the UGC to demand at least a pass in English at the Ordinary Level as a prerequisite for university entrance. The excuse for not doing this was that many schools had no teachers but – apart from the fact that this was true with regard to mathematics too, but that was compulsory – nothing had been done to provide remedial teaching for the students who suffered.
The other Cabinet paper was to establish a University Press. Interestingly, the idea has now come up again, but at one university as my own original Sabaragamuwa University Press was. That is good in itself but why the UGC cannot move to something with greater potential impact I cannot understand. But of course, those Cabinet papers too, though sent to Kabir and his successor, were also ignored.
All this alone was I think twice as much as any other Minister of Higher Education did in a year. But I had excellent staff, quite unlike the rubbish and relations (and the rubbish relations) my predecessors had, as the regular administrative staff at the Ministry told me. Indeed, when I resigned they tried to hang on to some of them, and my coordinating Secretary, the entirely reliable Chaminda Bandara, who had been in government service previously was transferred to that Ministry where he worked indefatigably for several years.
I revitalised the website, and insisted that we also work in Tamil, for which I got some excellent staff from Jeevan Thiagarajah. It was astonishing that the Ministry had not bothered about Tamil thus far, but I suppose no one cared.
Not only did I have regular posts about the changes we were making but I tried to evoke ideas from others, for having noted the stress in the President’s manifesto on the ‘extension of opportunities and appropriate education for jobs’ I asked for ‘observations on how best we can pursue these aims’. I also wrote to Vice-Chancellors asking them to let me know of ‘five significant achievements during your time in office, and five ideas for future development.’
One other area I tried to work in was to use the Provincial Council system to promote opportunities for students at provincial level. I wrote to the Chief Ministers to remind them about a constitutional provision that had been totally forgotten for nearly three decades – ‘according to the Constitution, Higher Education is a concurrent subject, and Provinces may establish and maintain new Universities and degree awarding institutions. This has not been done in the past, but it is essential if we are to move towards suitable higher education for all, as pledged in the manifesto. In particular I believe we must also have regional tertiary education institutes that would help us improve standards in secondary schools with regard to Mathematics and Science and English and the Technical Skills needed in the modern world. ‘
This would have been a seminal change. Meanwhile, I also tried to get individual universities to engage in socially relevant work with regard to their own geographical areas, which would have been very useful to the more neglected areas of the country.
When I had started on curriculum reform at Sabaragamuwa I had not been in favour of what was termed a dissertation, an essay supposedly based on research which every student had to produce in their final year. I thought these would be superficial, but since they now seemed part of the system at all universities I accepted the concept but insisted on a viva so we could make sure students had understood the subject and were not merely reproducing material culled from others.
But I still thought there was insufficient value in the exercise, so what I now suggested to the Vice-Chancellors was that they ensure that all such dissertations were based on a local problem, for instance difficulties as to water supply for geographers, local employment opportunities for economists, English teaching for English students. And then, I suggested, students and staff could sit together and formulate a development plan for the Division they had all worked on.
I had been worried in the preceding years by the lack of coherence I found with regard to Development Planning in the Districts in the North and East where I had held Reconciliation meetings in every administrative Division. I had found that there was hardly any consultation of the supposed recipients of development projects, with politicians allowed a free hand, more often than not to make money for themselves or select dependants.
I had no illusions that plans produced by universities would be given priority, nor indeed that they would necessarily solve problems. But the fact that such had been prepared, and that academics were willing to get involved with local communities, and perhaps help to develop a dialogue between the people and decision makers, would go some way towards institutionalizing consultation mechanisms.
But that idea too fell by the wayside after I ceased to hold office. So we have continuous bleating from those in power about the need to improve the relevance and quality of university education, but there have been no imaginative ideas to promote this, let alone the energy and initiative to ensure necessary changes. And of course, no one will dream of taking a leaf out of my book since the independent thinking that can alone take a country forward is anathema to those who cannot themselves think outside the box as far as educational and administrative changes are concerned.
All the print and electronic media report that a huge branch of a large tree has fallen on a school in Balangoda, killing a 17-year-old student and causing severe injuries to 16 students.A mother of a student whose son is studying with the victim, giving a voice cut to the media disclosed in a heart-rending story that the repeated reminders on this hazardous threat made to the Principal and the Regional Education Office for the last five years have not been heeded to until this tragedy claimed the life of an innocent student.
This is not the first time that students have perished in the school premises. A sixth-grade student died when a discarded iron pipe of a soccer goal post fell on his body at Thopawewa Maha Vidyalaya, Polonnaruwa. Senith Wijesinghe, a bright student at Ananda College, Colombo, perished on the spot when the turf roller fell on his body. Another student at Wellampitiya Maha Vidyalaya met his untimely death when a part of the parapet wall connected to the water pipeline fell on his body. Another unfortunate death of a student was reported from the south when a Hume pipe brought for road development work rolled out accidently killing a student in the school premises.
A careful analysis of the statistics of fatal and grave accidents to students disclose a shocking revelation. According to NHSL, 2,691 schoolchildren have been treated, out of which 274 were related to accidents in the school premises. Health Ministry sources say that 10,000 to 20,000 students are being treated for accidents annually.
Educational authorities should bear in mind that parents send their children to school on the basic premise that the school provides an accident free safety environment to their children. School Principals as well as the Regional/Zonal Education Directors have an inalienable duty to provide this basic protection to the students, leave aside the education. What the Education Ministry and the Department should do is not to resort to knee-jerk reaction when a fatal accident occurs and issue precautionary guidelines. Their hunky-dory attitude does not bode well for the wellbeing of the student community. What is required is a well-planned institutional strategy to face this calamitous situation.
My recollection says that the Ministry of Education had issued directions by way of circular instructions to the Zonal Education Directors to visit schools periodically and identify the hazardous situations and unsafe structures and trees with a view to taking on the spot remedial measures. If the authorities heeded such directives, the life of a Balangoda student could have been thwarted.
This short note would not be complete if it does not cover the numerous safety hazards frequently confronted by the student community in a school setting. In laboratories where students are called upon to deal hazardous chemicals. They should not be mixed together and stored separately. Students should handle chemicals under the direct supervision of the teachers. Unsafe and unregulated pits and trenches should be identified and barricaded with tiger tapes immediately with prominent wordings and luminous colors. Unsafe old structures such as old buildings, rusted iron structures, unsafe roofs and materials, heavy rollers should be identified and they should be immediately discarded/dismantled before such structures cause any harm to the students.
During sports activities- dehydration and heart related injuries should be prevented by proper re-hydration and avoiding vigorous outdoor practices in hot sun during hot periods of the year. In this country, school athletic meets and big matches are held in the month of February and March during which period, heat temperament is relatively unbearable. For long distance running, medical certificates from a medical doctor should be mandatory.
School principals are the custodian of the children’s safety and a competent safety team should be formed to avoid unsafe accidents with the collective support of the teachers and school prefects. The creation of a safety conscience and culture should be inculcated across the board. When questioned by a Principal of a leading girl’s school in Nugegoda, she was very complacent about the safety arrangements of the school by delegating this function to a lady PTI instructor, which is most unsatisfactory. The Principal or the Vice Principal should personally and directly take over this prime responsibility. It is utmost paramount to analyse everything from a safety eye and the PTI is woefully lacking this trait.
Last but not least, I could render my support to the Prime Minister who is in charge of the Education to create a hazard free safety environment in the schools with the expertise I have obtained locally and globally for over five decades voluntarily. What I emphasise for the hazard-free school environment is that the safety aspect should be institutionalised within the main system of education. It would be a desirable step to establish a safety branch in each Zonal Education Zone, considering the adverse trend of tragic accidents. Essentially the present adverse trend of accidents in schools has to be arrested as a utmost priority.
It is much regretted that my comprehensive article published in a leading newspaper have not had the desired effect for the last six months.
J. A. A. S. Ranasinghe
Productivity Specialist and Management Consultant
(The writer can be contacted a49@gmail.com)
If any material has a commercial value people will be motivated to collect, and sell it in return for some additional income. From this perspective, even cow-dung when presented in the form of suitable fertilizer for agriculture can be a good source of income for the owners of livestock farms. When concerned about the present-day economic hardships many people in the low-income range are badly in need of money for their day today struggling for a living while facing an atmosphere of skyrocketing cost of living. Hence, the duty of the state and the media is to enlighten and educate the public about the available avenues and encourage them to engage in the business of the waste recycling industry.
At present there is a lack of information or frequent publicity about any collecting centers that accept and pay for polythene and plastic wastes. Therefore, the public are not interested in collecting them. As a result, tons and tons of plastic and polythene wastes are dumped, burned or thrown into waterways. It has become a widespread menace that wherever and whenever a mass gathering such as a procession, political rally, musical show, protest march, demonstration, a get together party is held, tons of waste, particularly, polythene and plastic items scattered in heaps on roadsides are an ugly sight to see. For example, Annual events like the Sri pada pilgrimage, numerous religious processions countrywide, new year celebration sites, sports meet, hotels and reception hall-based events etc. during the last tooth relic exhibition period in Kandy too, piles of waste were left to the annoyance of the municipal authorities. This is an everlasting environmental disaster which causes further and further degradation and destruction to the entire country.
In a recent news item, I happened to notice an entrepreneur, Sulalitha Perera from Bandaragama, is becoming successful in a polythene recycling scheme. He has expressed that he hopes to expand his business in all districts if he gets help from the government and other stakeholders. This is, indeed, a praiseworthy effort which should be encouraged and assisted by all concerned authorities, mainly by the ministry of environmental affairs. The media particularly the television and social media like YouTube must highlight the value of such environment friendly businesses which protect the environment, bring in forex to the economy, and provide employment opportunities to the community.
In this regard, the main responsibility of all media particularly the electronic media (specially TV+ you tube) is to glorify the recycling industry by creating new dramatic episodes and new songs encompassing the environment cleanliness and benefits of recycling industries as well as to encourage the communities to collect and sell all polythene and plastic products to the collecting centers to earn an additional income instead of throwing or burning them in the neighborhood. For anybody, rich or poor, it is no shame to take back the collection of polythene and plastic that gathers in one’s homestead to the place where one purchases daily needs. A certain amount of deduction of the costs by the trader in lieu of the returned waste material is also profitable for the customer. This is the greatest contribution that all of us can make to sustain a Clean Sri Lanka.
Madduma Bandara Navarathne Embilipitiya
The Middle East is undergoing a realignment of power. With Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear sites and the assassination of at least two of Iran’s senior security officials, Benjamin Netanyahu is showing his willingness to go it alone and ignore pressure from the Trump administration. Though Donald Trump sought diplomatic solutions to the growing tensions between Israel and Iran, it appears that the US president, despite his previously strong relationship with the Israeli leader, was unable to restrain Netanyahu. The timing of the strikes is important.
The Trump administration probably knew that they could not prevent Israel from striking Iran, but they did think they could pressure Israel to hold off launching an attack until after the US had solidified a new nuclear deal with Iran, talks for which were scheduled for June 15. Just hours before the air strikes, Trump said: “As long as I think there will be an agreement [with Iran], I don’t want them going in.” Experts had been divided in the past, over how much leverage the US held over Israel. Trump, following months of groundwork laid by the Joe Biden administration, managed to secure a ceasefire deal with Israel in January. But as part of the negotiation, Netanyahu succeeded in reversing sanctions on settlers in the West Bank, giving him free rein to act there.
Additionally, the US also lifted its freeze on the transfer of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, another concession that benefited Israel. The US also proved unwilling or incapable of stopping the humanitarian crisis that has unfolded in Gaza. Washington also appeared powerless to stop Israel’s pounding of Lebanon and its efforts to eradicate the Iranbacked militia Hezbollah. The US has become more of a spectator than a powerful regional actor. And sources suggest that Washington was not informed in advance of Israel’s airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in October 2024, a sign of Israel’s growing willingness to act without US approval.
Indeed, the expansion of the war in Gaza to Lebanon was a pivotal moment in the region. With significant Israeli public support to stop Hezbollah (which had been launching rockets towards northern Israel), Israel pounded southern Beirut with airstrikes, killing several high-ranking Hezbollah officials. In the aftermath, Hezbollah was unable to replenish itself with younger recruits (it had relied on its charismatic leadership to recruit in the past), and the losses caused Hezbollah’s organisation to implode. By November 2024, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the US.
Hezbollah’s near military and organisational collapse has been a big blow for Iran’s regional power. Hezbollah was at one point the most heavily armed violent non-state actor in the world. It had an army of around 50,000 men and experts speculated that it had as many as 200,000 rockets and missiles of various ranges in its arsenal. With the assassination of so many high-level officials in Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which Iran has bankrolled and used in its proxy conflicts with Israel, Iran has been severely weakened. As Iran is in the middle of an economic crisis, it no longer has the financial means to revive these traditional allies.
For decades Iran had tried to gain strategic depth in the Middle East, with the US estimating that Iran spent more than US$16 billion to prop up Bashar al-Assad in Syria from 2012 to 2020. Additionally, with the fall of Assad, Syria can no longer serve as a transit corridor or logistical hub for shipments of arms from Iran to Hezbollah. With Turkey’s support for the various armed militias that ousted the Assad regime, it is Ankara, and not Tehran, that sees itself as the big winner in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war. The US, meanwhile, is seeing its influence in the Middle East waning. And Trump’s plan for extending trade in the region, particularly in the Gulf, may also be undermined by the rising regional tension.
The US had been due to send Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to this weekend’s talks in Oman, with the aim of getting Tehran to agree to stop enriching uranium (which is crucial for creating nuclear weapons) in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. Trump had said that he did not want Israel to go ahead with its attack on Iran, and yet these calls went unheeded. Some US officials were optimistic that the escalating tensions taking place between Iran and Israel were mere tactics of negotiation amid the important nuclear talks. However, though the US was clearly warned about the attack, Washington was not able to deter Israel. Though the US still supplies Israel with US$3.8 billion worth of arms per year, it has had little success in exercising much leverage recently.
It remains to be seen if domestic political pressure could halt this US funding. International relations experts should not be surprised that Israel went on the offensive in Iran. Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in 2024 were just a precursor to the bigger prize of bringing Iran to its knees. For Netanyahu, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East and shift the regional power dynamics, and he appears to care little about what the US, or the rest of the world, thinks of how he does it.
(The writer is Professor of Government, University of Essex. This article was published on www.theconversation.com)
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