Sugath Kulatunga

 A few days back the President stated that the education system has to be radically changed to meet the skills essential for the future development needs of the country. It is most encouraging that the President has become enlightened in such a critical need at least now after more than for long decades.

Mr. Wickremasinghe was our Minister of Education in 1980.

This was the time when the East Asian Tiger economies were making radical changes in their systems of education to meet the emerging needs of industrialization and economic development. They used education to spur growth, create jobs and raise productivity. In these countries Education was a primary driver of their long-term development strategy and was a high priority for policy makers. There was strong alignment in their growth strategy, labor market needs, and education policies.”

But at that time in the 80s Minister Wickremasinghe was not cocerned in the developments taking place in those fast growing economies. Neither did the Ministry bureaucracy interested in learning from the experience of these countries. Our diplomatic representatives in those countries followed the philosophy of the three wise monkeys of ‘no seeing, no hearing, no speaking’, while enjoying their perks.

South Korea transformed itself in a few decades from an underdeveloped nation to an industrialized country exporting high-technology products (Domjahn 2013, p. 16). Much of this development is attributed to improvements in the country’s education system. South Korea placed education at the center of its long-term development strategy, Various South Korean and international scholars (Ellinger and Beckham 1997; Han 1994; Kim 2000) have credited the nation’s economic success to an efficient education system that provides the quality workforce necessary for economic expansion. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284831895

Taiwan ROC” is an Island smaller than Sri Lanka with a similar population. Before 1980s it was a predominantly an agricultural economy. Today it is a high tech powerhouse leading the world in a number of high tech industries. It has a per capita income                of 36,  000 dollars. At the beginning of the 1980s, Taiwan changed its education policy radically, gave priority to technical education and increased the ratio for senior vocational schools and general high school to 7:3. By 2012 there were 155 senior vocational schools, 14 junior colleges, and 77 universities/colleges of science & technology, totaling 246. It is the education system that has sustained the significant development of this small nation. According to the Minister of Education in Taiwan Technical and vocational education has played a decisive role by nurturing the range of human resources required for our basic national infrastructure and for promoting economic development, and contributed enormously to bringing about what has been acclaimed as Taiwan’s economic miracle”. Se-Hwa Wu, PhD Minister, MOE

An attempt to introduce an element of practical education in the form of the NCGE for School leavers introduced during the government of Mrs. Bandaranayake was scrapped by the next government falling back on the SSC. While SL deliberately ignored technical education, with independence India established in 1950 five Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the main States of the country. These IITs were modeled on the best example of higher technical education from Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They have been the cutting edge of technology development in India and are highly recognized internationally.

Even if the government of 1980 were not impressed with the Asian examples, they could have learned from the dual system of education in Germany which has a major role in the German education system, attracting almost 60% of a typical age cohort at upper secondary level. The dual system in which 75% of VET students enrol is a highly effective way of imparting a wide range of occupational skills and integrating young people into the labour market, attracting global admiration. A central principle of the dual system is that of complementarity between school and work-based learning with more theoretical types of learning in school balancing more practical learning in the workplace. The two elements are mutually reinforcing: theory facilitates a well-grounded approach to practical problems; while practice in turn supports theory by providing a continuous flow of real world examples and applications.”

The world is now in the fourth industrial revolution. The lack of vision of our politicians and policy makers have left us at least half a century behind in technology and industrialization. We may still have a leapfrog advantage to graduate from elementary technology into emerging high technology. For this the present education system has to be completely overhauled. Patch work measures will be unproductive.

Sugath Kulatunga