A Failed Government is Destroying Our Children
In May 2022, over half a million 16 year old Sri Lankan children sat their O’Level examination. Passing this exam is necessary for them to continue with their schooling.
This batch (referred to as the 2021 O’Level batch, as their exam was meant to be held in December 2021) was only 14 years old and had just begun their first year preparing for the O’Levels when, in March 2020, Covid hit Sri Lanka. First because of the pandemic and then, because of the political and economic collapse brought about by government incompetence, corruption and mismanagement, the country’s local schools have remained shut for the majority of the time between March 2020 and May 2022 – this batch’s entire O’Level period.
Here is a breakdown of school closures during this time.
An average year has 195 school days. These children, preparing for the first and (as we all remember) most daunting public exam of their lives, missed 111 school days in 2020 (their first O’Level year) and 154 school days in 2021 (their second O’Level year). In 2022, when the country shifted from the Covid crisis to the political and economic crisis, chaos continued to pervade. The country disintegrated into riots, experienced state instigated violence, citizen protests, intermittent curfews, daily power cuts, fuel crises, transport issues, food crises, gas shortages, parliamentary instability and astronomical rises in the cost of living.
Our children’s lives – their physical security, psychological wellbeing, access to school, happiness, peace, stability – continued to be severely compromised. Even when schools remained open, many children could not attend school. Transport problems, food problems, children having to take up jobs, families falling apart… these crises continue into the foreseeable future.
The constitution’s directive principles recognise, as a central objective of the state, the “assurance to all persons of the right to universal and equal access to education at all levels” and guides parliament, the president and cabinet to facilitate this.
However, the government has persistently failed to provide children with education and the necessary infrastructure to access education since 2020. In spite of not adhering to this basic responsibility, with no acknowledgement of this failing nor with any apparent consideration for the damage caused to children’s lives, the government instead increases pressure on children and families by insisting on the ritual of arduous public exams.
This article poses two fundamental questions:
- If a government cannot provide children with access to schools, can it legitimately conduct exams?
- Are we willing to allow a failed, bankrupt government to hold the children of this country hostage?
In September 2020, six months into the pandemic, the National Institute of Education (NIE) produced a reduced syllabus of essential learning outcomes for all grades. This was released to schools with the assurance that children at the O’Level exam will only be tested on the same. In January 2021, (four months later and six weeks before 2020 batch O’Level exam), the Ministry of Education (MOE) informed schools that children would, in fact, be tested from the entire syllabus at the O’Level exam. Nothing was done to challenge or expose this serious malfunction.
All crises in Sri Lanka lead to the black hole of accountability. And it is to the advantage of a failed government to keep the workings of the state mechanism opaque. How did such a serious mistake even come about? Was it through ignorance? (the MOE didn’t know about the NIE circular). Was it a clash of egos? (someone in the MOE wanted to embarrass someone in the NIE) Was it an administrative error? (The Exams Department hadn’t got the memo?)
The tragedy of our bankrupt country is that any of the above three scenarios is plausible. The compounding tragedy is that those responsible are never held to account.
In this manner we move forward from crisis to crisis. Those in power make disastrous mistakes. Those above them, around them and below them keep quiet. The victims are always the most helpless.
Children, destroyed by our education system, disappear from our schools, from our country, sometimes from life itself. (Sri Lankan has one of the highest rates of teenage suicide in the world).
