A Final Educational Fling – 3. Involving industry

Tags

career guidance, coordination, educational reform, English, industry, reporting mechanisms, Skills Development Officer, social marketing, soft skills, TVEC, vocational training

but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

The third area in which Mahinda Samarasinghe decided that radical change was necessary in the vocational training sector was with regard to industry involvement. This was obviously essential in that there was no point in training youngsters for work if employers thought their training was inadequate. But there had been no concerted effort previously to involve businesses in developing curricula and in providing guidance to trainers.

The sector had benefited vastly from World Bank and Asian Development Bank projects in the preceding period, but there seemed little practical progress despite all the money that had been poured in. Of course several buildings had been put up, and several studies done at vast expense, but little effort had been made to ensure that the recommendations of these studies were carried out. Thus, any study one looked at indicated that soft skills, and in particular English communication capacity, were lacking in trainees, but nothing had been done about this. And no one had bothered to point out to the VTA that they could not expect their students to learn English if they had hardly any English teachers – 22 I think for 245 centres at the beginning of this year, with some of them hardly knowing English.

Many courses had very few students but no efforts had been made to understand the reasons for this or increase enrolment. Soon after I started work I found that Rs 30 million had been spent on what was termed social marketing, but no coherent system had been put in place to check on the impact on the campaign. When I pointed this out, I was asked by the head of the Sector Skills Development Project, which administered the funds, to chair the Committee that was supposed to deal with Social Marketing and Career Guidance. I think he saw this as his only hope of productive action, and further investigation indicated that indeed nothing practical had been done previously. Their plans for instance included no reference to social media, which first principles would have indicated could have been a major instrument of getting messages across to the young. And though the two subjects had sensibly enough been combined for the committee, hardly anything had been done about Career Guidance, except a workshop after which it was claimed that a model sector had been set up in Ratnapura. The impact expected of this model was not on record, and there had been no follow up to check on what it was doing. When I suggested this needed investigation, the Ministry finally visited the place and discovered that very little was going on.

A Final Educational Fling – 2. Setting priorities

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Critical Thinking, Department of Technical Education and Training, English, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Sabaragamuwa University, sinhala, Tamil, Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission, Vocational Training Authority, Vocational Training Centres

but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

I had enjoyed working with Mahinda Samarasinghe when I was Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, and also during our many visits to Geneva when we staved of the efforts of the British (and then the Americans after Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State) to stop us eliminating terrorism in Sri Lanka.

Mahinda gave the impression of being laid back in his approach, but he worked hard and studied his briefs. He was also capable of sharp insights and, on becoming Minister of Skills Development and Vocational Training, he worked out very quickly what was needed. Before asking me to help, he had identified three major problems, and I suppose he knew from my track record that I was the best person to help him resolve these.

First and foremost was the need to update courses, and in particular to introduce English and other soft skills. I had been the first to introduce Core Courses into universities, when I joined Sabaragamuwa University way back in 1997. This built on what Arjuna Aluwihare had started when he set up Affiliated University Colleges, but it was only at Sabaragamuwa that we introduced Critical Thinking, with exercises designed to make students recognize systems, understand the concept of variables, and ensure attention to relevance. Initially the students protested about what they saw as games playing, but later I recall a group telling me, when I attended a wedding of one of the brightest, that it was such aptitude tests that they were set when applying for jobs.

We also made both Sinhala and Tamil compulsory for all students, in addition to English. When I insisted on a Third Language, my Sinhala and Tamil staff declared that students were no longer taught to write properly in mother tongue, and this should be remedied. I also introduced library studies, because I found that students had no idea how to find material in books, since they had not been taught the use of a contents page, let alone an index. I used to feel immeasurably sad, if for instance I asked them which countries neighboured China, as they rifled through the pages of the atlases we gave them instead of checking first where the relevant information was to be found.

A Final Educational Fling – 1. Accepting another task

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Chandrika Kumaratunga, Electoral Reform, English medium, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Maithripala Sirisena, Mangala Samaraweera, Mohan Pieris, No Confidence, Parliament, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sarath Buddhadasa, vocational training

but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

When, just over a year ago, I was not put into Parliament, I thought it was time to call it a day. I had a house to live in, and a beautiful country cottage, I enjoyed reading and writing, and there seemed no point in knocking my head against brick walls. Though I continue to believe that Mahinda Rajapaksa did more for this country as its leader than his two predecessors, I had registered the appalling nature of those who dominated the last years of his government, and had indeed dissected them throughout 2014 in numerous articles, in particular the series called ‘Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Seven Dwarfs’. So I did not regret having worked for Maithripala Sirisena’s election as President in January 2015. But I realized that my old friend Dayan Jayatilleka had been right in predicting that, decent though the President was, he would be dominated by Ranil Wickremesinghe and Chandrika Kumaratunga.

I had hoped he would realize soon how awful both of them were, and how out of touch with the country at large, but this seemed to be taking a long time. He had allowed himself to be dragooned by them and their allies into calling an early General Election, contrary to his commitment to ensure that Electoral Reform was enacted before Parliament was dissolved. However I thought he then made the right decision in putting President Rajapaksa on the UPFA list for the General Election, since without him the UNP would have romped home.

But sadly polarizing forces made it impossible for the two of them to work together. I later told President Rajapaksa that he had to appreciate how nervous the President had been made by the pronouncements of some of the candidates on the UPFA slate, that they would destroy the President if they won a majority. Mahinda told me that the President should not have taken such pronouncements seriously, since they were uttered by youngsters, but it was a pity he did not rein such people in.

Indeed even experienced politicians such as Vasudeva Nanayakkara behaved foolishly in claiming that, with the election going well, the main task at hand was to make sure that those within the UPFA who had supported the President would not be elected. I told him this was utterly foolish, since campaigning in such a manner would confuse the voters. But once Vasu gets an idea into his head, he cannot think straight. Indeed he told me later that they had all been wrong in insisting that, were a vote of No Confidence in the Prime Minister to succeed before Parliament had been dissolved, a Prime Minister acceptable to the UPFA group should be appointed.

He claimed that this was because they were a majority in Parliament, but he had obviously forgotten, as Ranil did way back in 2003, that the President had the power to dissolve Parliament whenever he wished.