None of the election agendas have foreseen the danger of brain drain in Sri Lanka. There is no single parliamentarian who came up with sustainable solution until to date to the brain drain silently happening in Sri Lanka. Time need to decide whether we need parliamentarians with at least the basic degree with a value system. The need of the hour is to make a future for the children in Sri Lanka.
The future of Sri Lanka is uncertain for the future generation. Still the schools in plantation sector do not have access to quality value based education. We believe in equity in education which is still not realistic in some areas. They are various forms of uncertainties that structure futures. The impact from geopolitical events at the macro structural level factors emphasizes the need for policymakers to deeply reflect on and integrate change as a constant in policy making in education. Its scenarios impact traditional understandings of human capital development and raise the need for systems to prepare students and future citizens for new, alternate, and uncertain economies and radically changed societies.
“Change is the only constant in life” – Heraclitus
Countries in Southeast Asia are diverse in their educational capacities and face inherent realities of widespread geographical and demographic differences. To improve educational outcomes organisational structure and political economy, teaching and learning, curriculum, assessment learning environment matters a lot. Singapore, Malaysia upgrade, revises their curriculums in every three years. There is no elitism in professions such as law, medicine, and engineering.
All the professions are made for people and best practitioner is a good community leader. With the changes in global education landscape it is essential to introduce new subjects without removing old subjects such as international Humanitarian Law, cyber crimes, western classics, intellectual property rights etc into the undergraduate curricula of law. At present students are searching for astronomy, aeronautical engineering, aircraft building, space science where our system of education has not even thought of. In lapse of these initiatives students are leaving the country in search of such studies in foreign universities. Absolutely very few are returning.
Trickledown effect to all the provinces equally
We need competent graduates with value based education to compete with other countries and to be good community leaders. There is a huge gap between the subjects taught in Advanced Level examination and the undergraduate curricula. Further, the gap needs to be bridged in a way that assists to enhance thinking capacity of the child. Therefore, such changes are required in our system of education. All the new efforts should have trickledown effect to all the provinces equally.
The relevance of certain curriculum is questionable after ten years time as they have not attempted any upgrading especially in the higher education, Sri Lanka. Alignment with national socio-economic development and the future economy is further questionable.
There is a necessity to consider strategies that improve learning quality and the measurement of teaching learning outcomes. This is effective when all young children in each province have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education, higher education as well as vocational education equally.
Technological universities
A true change in recent times, one of the most important changes to occur in favour of most Sri Lankan children who have the talent of ‘doing’ apart from ‘knowing’ or theoretical knowledge, is the introduction of technology subjects stream to the GCE (A/L) curriculum. More funding arrangements were made without thinking of existing pool of teachers to teach at secondary level to facilitate entry of technological stream in each province.
It would have beneficial of developing one or two technological universities than introducing technological stream considering the funds used without adequate resource backing from the secondary sector.
Quality of education relies on more access to education where technology stream is a dream for some of the provinces where most of the day has been covered with dark clouds even without sunrays in some provinces. The expected student outcome will not be reached without filling teacher requirement in all schools equally to facilitate technology stream.
There are no constructive debates are happening in the parliament regarding the future generation of Sri Lanka. Waves of changes are taking place in the global higher education sector in Sri Lanka. National think tank need to be formed to prepare and implement action plans in higher education.
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