Traditional and Colonial Systems
The education system of Sri Lanka until
colonial times primarily was designed for a small elite in a society with
relatively low technology. The vast majority of the population was
illiterate or semiliterate. Among the Sinhalese, learning was the job of
Buddhist monks. At the village level, literate monks would teach
privileged students in the pansal, or temple school. The
curriculum there, still taught to young children, included the Sinhala
alphabet and memorization of elementary Buddhist literature--the Nam
potha (Book of Names) of Buddhist shrines, the Magul lakuna
(Book of Auspicious Symbols on the Buddha's body), and classic stories of
the Buddha's life. The pursuit of higher education typically was reserved
for men who became monks and took place at universities (pirivena)
dedicated almost exclusively to memorization and commentary on the Pali
scriptures. Among the Tamil population, village schools, which were
located near temples, were run by literate Brahmans or educated Vellalas.
Technical training was highly developed for students of the arts (such as
architecture or sculpture); for engineers, who applied geometry to
problems of irrigation; and for craftsmen in various trades. This
training, however, was generally the preserve of closed corporations,
castes, or families. Knowledge was often passed down from fathers to sons.
Although colonization brought
European-style education to Sri Lanka, especially to prepare students for
positions in the colonial administrations, few women went to school and
most people remained uneducated. During the sixteenth century, Portuguese
missionaries established up to 100 schools designed to foster a Roman
Catholic culture among the growing Christian community in the low country.
When the Dutch took over in 1656, they set up a well-organized system of
primary schools to support the missionary efforts of the Dutch Reformed
Church. By 1760 they had 130 schools with an attendance of nearly 65,000
students. The British takeover led to the closing of many Dutch schools
and a short-term contraction of European-style education in the low
country. By the mid-nineteenth century, government-funded schools and
Christian schools were again expanding; in 1870, however, their combined
student bodies had fewer than 20,000 students. Because they were educated
in English, the graduates of the European-style schools, a large portion
of them Christians from the low country in the southwest, went on to fill
lower and middle-level positions in the colonial administration. Apart
from the European-style schools, education continued through the
traditional system in Tamil and Sinhala.
In 1870 a series of events revolutionized
the education system in Sri Lanka. The government began to expand the
number of state-run schools and instituted a program of grants for private
schools that met official standards. Medical and law colleges were
established in Colombo. There was a big increase in the number of students
(which totalled more than 200,000 by 1900), but the lopsided development
that had characterized the early nineteenth century became even more
apparent by the early twentieth century. Private schools taught in
English, which offered the best road for advancement, were dominated by
Christian organizations, remained concentrated in the southwest, and
attracted a disproportionate number of Christian and Tamil students.
Although institutions that used Tamil and Sinhala continued to function as
elementary schools, secondary institutions that taught exclusively in
English attracted an elite male clientele destined for administrative
positions. The education of women lagged behind; by 1921 the female
literacy rate among the Christians was 50 percent, among the Buddhists 17
percent, among the Hindus 10 percent, and among the Muslims only 6
percent.
The colonial pattern began to change in
the 1930s, after legislative reforms placed the Ministry of Education
under the control of elected representatives. The government directly
controlled an ever-larger proportion of schools (about 60 percent by 1947)
and teacher-training colleges. As part of a policy to promote universal
literacy, education became free in government schools, elementary and
technical schools were set up in rural areas, and vernacular education
received official encouragement. In 1942 with the establishment of the
University of Ceylon, free education was available from kindergarten
through the university level. When independence came in 1948, Sri Lanka
had a welldeveloped education infrastructure. Although still hampered by
gross ethnic, geographic, and gender inequalities, it formed the basis for
a modern system.
The Modern Education System
Since independence in 1948, the
government has made education one of its highest priorities, a policy that
has yielded excellent results. Within a period of less than 40 years, the
number of schools in Sri Lanka increased by over 50 percent, the number of
students increased more than 300 percent, and the number of teachers
increased by more than 400 percent. Growth has been especially rapid in
secondary schools, which in 1985 taught 1.2 million students, or one-third
of the student population. Teachers made up the largest government work
force outside the plantation industry. The literate population has grown
correspondingly, and by the mid1980s over 90 percent of the population was
officially literate (87 percent for those above ten years of age), with
near universal literacy among the younger population. This is by far the
most impressive progress in South Asia and places Sri Lanka close to the
leaders in education among developing nations.
The government has taken an ever larger
role in education. Because private institutions no longer receive grants
from the government, they are forced to charge fees while competing with
free state-run schools. The percentage of students in the state system has
grown constantly, and by the 1980s 99 percent of female students and 93
percent of male students at the primary school level were being trained in
government-run schools. The government did not have a monopoly over
education because Buddhist pansala and pirivena, Muslim
schools, and Christian schools still thrived (the Roman Catholic Church
alone operated several hundred institutions from kindergarten to secondary
level, teaching over 80,000 children). The education system of the state,
however, had an overwhelming influence on the majority of the population,
especially the Sinhalese.
The state has tried to change the
language of instruction in its primary and secondary schools from English
to Tamil or Sinhala. By the 1960s, the vernacular languages were the
primary medium in all government secondary schools. In the 1980s, English
remained, however, an important key to advancement in technical and
professional careers, and there was still competition among well-to-do
families to place members in private English-language programs in urban
areas. Ethnic minorities long associated with European-style education
still formed a large percentage of the English-speaking elite. In the
1980s, for example, almost 80 percent of the Burghers knew English, while
among the Sinhalese the English-speakers comprised only 12 percent.
Children from age five to ten attend
primary school; from age eleven to fifteen they attend junior secondary
school (terminating in Ordinary Level Examination); and from age sixteen
to seventeen they attend senior secondary school (terminating in the
Advanced Level Examination). Those who qualify can go on to the university
system, which is totally state-run. In the late 1980s, there were 8
universities and 1 university college with over 18,000 students in 28
faculties, plus 2,000 graduate and certificate students. The university
system included the University of Peradeniya, about six kilometers from
Kandy, formed between 1940 and 1960; the universities of Vidyalankara and
Vidyodaya, formed in the 1950s and 1960s from restructured pirivena;
the College of Advanced Technology in Katubedda, Colombo District, formed
in the 1960s; the Colombo campus of the University of Ceylon, created in
1967; the University of Ruhunu (1979); and Batticaloa University College
(1981). There was also the Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka,
established in Colombo in 1982.
Among the major problems still facing the
educational system in the late 1980s were a serious dropout rate in the
primary grades and a continuing bias toward urban environments at the
expense of the countryside. The median level of educational attainment in
Sri Lanka was somewhere between grades 5 and 9, and almost 40 percent of
the students dropped out of school after 9 years. The reasons were not
hard to discern in a primarily agricultural society, where many young
people were more urgently needed in the fields or at home than in school
once they had achieved an operational level of literacy and arithmetic
skills. Many urban youth from low-income backgrounds also dropped out at
an early age. This pattern provided two-thirds of the students with an
education through grade 5 but less than 10 percent of the population with
a high school degree and less than 1 percent with a college diploma.
Despite government efforts in the 1980s to expand opportunities for youth
from rural areas and more sparsely inhabited districts, the pressures for
early dropout were more pressing in precisely those areas where illiteracy
was most prevalent. In Colombo, for example, the overall literacy rate was
94 percent in 1988, while in Amparai District it was only 75 percent.
Rural schools were more widely scattered, with poor facilities and
inadequate equipment, especially in the sciences. Teachers preferred not
to work in the countryside, and many rural schools did not even go up to
the level of twelfth grade.
The most dynamic field in education
during the 1970s and 1980s was technical training. In the late 1980s, the
Ministry of Higher Education operated a network of twenty-seven technical
colleges and affiliated institutes throughout the country. Courses led to
national diplomas in accountancy, commerce, technology, agriculture,
business studies, economics, and manufacture. Other government
institutions, including the Railway, Survey, and Irrigation Departments,
ran their own specialized training institutes. The Ministry of Labour had
three vocational and craft training institutes. The number of students in
all state-run technical institutes by the mid-1980s was 22,000. In
addition, the government operated schools of agriculture in four
locations, as well as practical farm schools in each district. A
continuing problem in all fields of technical education was extreme gender
differentiation in job training; women tended to enroll in home economics
and teaching courses rather than in scientific disciplines.
Education and Ethnic Conflict
During the first fifteen years after
independence, students sought a university degree primarily to qualify for
service in government, which remained by far the major employer of
administrative skills. Liberal arts, leading to the bachelor of arts
degree, was the preferred area of study as a preparation for
administrative positions. Because the university exams were conducted in
English--the language of the elite--the potential pool of university
applicants was relatively small, and only 30 percent of all applicants
were admitted. By the mid-1960s, the examinations were conducted in
Sinhala and Tamil, opening the universities to a larger body of
applicants, many of whom were trained in the vernacular languages in
state-run secondary schools. At the same time, university expansion slowed
down because of lack of funds, and it became impossible to admit the
increasing numbers of qualified candidates; by 1965 only 20 percent of
applicants were admitted, and by 1969 only 11 percent. Those students who
did manage to enter the university followed the traditional road to a
bachelor's degree, until neither the government nor private enterprises
could absorb the glut of graduates. In this way, the direction of
educational expansion by the late 1960s led to two major problems
surrounding the university system: the growing difficulty of admissions
and the growing irrelevance of a liberal arts education to employment. The
big losers were members of the Sinhalese community, who were finally able
to obtain high school or university degrees, but who found further
advancement difficult. Frustrated aspirations lay behind the participation
of many students in the abortive uprising by the People's Liberation Front
(Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna--JVP) in 1971.
During the colonial period and the two
decades after independence, the Sri Lankan Tamil community--both Hindu and
Christian--outstripped the Sinhalese community in the relative percentage
of students in secondary schools and university bachelor of arts degree
programs. As the government increasingly fell into the hands of the
Sinhalese, however, possibilities for government service declined for
Tamil students. Tamil secondary schools then used their strength in
science curriculums to prepare their students in science and medicine, and
by the 1960s Tamils dominated the university student bodies in those
fields. Thus, at precisely the time when Sinhalese bachelor of arts
candidates found their careers thwarted by changes in the job market,
Tamil science students were embarking on lucrative professional careers.
Sinhalese agitation aimed at decreasing the numbers of Tamil students in
science and medical faculties became a major political issue.
Overt political favoritism did not
eliminate the dominance of well-trained Tamil students until 1974, when
the government instituted a district quota system of science admissions.
When each district in the country had a number of reserved slots for its
students, the Sinhalese community benefited because it dominated a
majority of districts. Tamil admissions ratios remained higher than the
percentage of Tamils in the population, but declined precipitously from
previous levels. In the 1980s, 60 percent of university admissions were
allocated according to district quotas, with the remaining 40 percent
awarded on the basis of individual merit. This system guaranteed
opportunity for all ethnic groups in rough approximation to their
population throughout the country.
Although the admissions controversy and
the quota system resulted in a more equitable distribution of
opportunities for Sri Lankans in general, they damaged the prospects of
many excellent Tamil students coming out of secondary schools. The
education policies of the government were perceived by educated members of
the Tamil community as blatant discrimination. Many Tamil youths reacted
to the blockage of their educational prospects by supporting the Tamil
United Liberation Front and other secessionist cells. Large-scale
improvements in education had, paradoxically, contributed to ethnic
conflict. |
