The Hon. Rajeevan Jeyachandramoorthy

¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, with regard to today’s debate on education reform, first I must say that, despite reforms over the years, there remain serious doubts as to how far these have produced good citizens. Especially, our schooling and university systems too often produce result-printing machines rather than human beings with values. Children are constantly asked: “Which school? What results? How many marks?” This has fostered a self-centred mindset among both children and adults. Whether teachers or officials or educationists, many exhibit vindictive tendencies; I have seen this often. If a subordinate questions an official or a teacher, the response is, “I will do this to you” or “I will transfer you.” Such traits have been fostered by the old education system.

¶ 02 Reforms come from time to time, but the system we expect is different — one rich in values and culture, respecting others. We must prepare students to world standards. Reform is not merely developing curricula. Along with curricular change, we must develop human resources and upgrade infrastructure in schools, technical colleges and universities to suit the times.

¶ 03 Examination systems here impose great mental stress, even driving some towards suicide. Recently, I heard of a scholarship candidate threatened by a teacher who pointed a sharpened pencil at the child and said, “I will poke you,” terrifying the child. Even teachers are pushed into such mindsets by an exam-obsessed system. In even big schools, teachers often ignore shortcomings of some students and fail to value them, instead pushing everyone to chase results.

¶ 04 We must change this into a humane education, one that provides employability, enables standing on one’s own feet. University graduates, upon graduation, often lack personality. They merely read textbooks, sit exams and collect degrees, but do not emerge as the capable graduates society needs. Countries like Finland, Canada, Singapore, Israel, Rwanda, South Korea and Tanzania have embraced multilingual or bilingual policies and reaped many benefits: educational excellence, inclusivity, unity, a bilingual workforce, better access to public services, economic growth, social harmony, global competency, cultural identity, national unity, global integration and innovation. Recently Malaysia also reformed based on its language policy. In Sri Lanka, however, Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils cannot properly communicate due to language barriers. Sinhalese do not speak Tamil; Tamils do not speak Sinhala; and we are weak in the link language. We must develop language use in official communication. Still, police issue letters only in their mother tongue and cannot use a second or link language, causing public hardship.

¶ 05 Taking the North as an example: according to [a recent] report, Grade 3 literacy and numeracy are low. In the Northern Province, reading ability is 16 per cent; in the Eastern Province, 25 per cent. As reading declines, O/L pass rates are also low. We must pay special attention to Tamil students in the North and East in literacy and numeracy, and address this through the new reforms. Further, when students reach O/L and cannot pass, they should be directed to vocational training; Malaysia has succeeded in this.

¶ 06 Beyond curriculum development, in the North and East teacher transfers are a major issue. Under the guise of service requirements or annual transfers, teachers are repeatedly disturbed and even used as human shields. Some female teachers have complained that frequent long bus journeys have led to miscarriages; when they complain, they are told, “Why did you marry? Why did you join the public service?” We should design staffing to consider such realities and strengthen district-level teacher cadres. There is also gross inequality in resource distribution: some schools have abundant resources and many students, while others have almost none, even lacking internet or photocopiers. In the forthcoming reforms, all these issues must be addressed so that all students, teachers and schools are treated equally, and rural schools have resources on par with urban schools. I conclude.