Education Crisis: A Humanitarian Crisis

By Tara de Mel –AUGUST 5, 2021

Dr. Tara de Mel

Of all the pandemic-initiated crises, starting with public health & economic, the education crisis has been the one that’s often relegated in the list of priorities. When all schools in about 192 countries abruptly shuttered in March 2020 ‘ousting’ nearly 1.6 Billion students from education, it chalked a historic milestone in education, globally. Several countries immediately took action to facilitate online and internet-based education for students.

Most economically advantaged countries had a majority of students switching to online education seamlessly. Some less advantaged and low-income countries used the help of international agencies and swiftly took steps to enable internet and device access to students and teachers, in addition to providing pedagogical assistance. Some countries used this historic opportunity to re-design curricula and teaching methodologies to suit the time. Such governments allocated funds for teacher-training and for equipping teachers to meet the post-pandemic education challenges.

(https://en.unesco.org/news/global-education-coalition-explores-digital-learning-turn-africa, and https://theconversation.com/how-african-countries-can-reform-education-to-get-ahead-after-pandemic-school-closures-163935)

This is Sri Lanka

The entire student (4.3 million) & teacher (241,000) populations have been facing crisis after crisis since March 2020. With school closure, less than 10% of students had the ability to connect to real-time face-to-face education, online. The internet accessibility, as per Census 2019 is only 34.11%, and as per a Computer Literacy survey, only 22.2% of households owned a laptop or PC. About 45% of students used parents’ smart phones to access notes sent by teachers using WhatsApp. A study done by LIRNEAsia last year describes these data. In summary, more than 50% of students had no access to any form of education, since the pandemic.

Since March 2020 teachers have been devoting time, energy and using their own meagre resources to provide some form of education to students. Some have borrowed or pawned personal valuables to buy feature phones. Some have used their own initiative to learn how to conduct classes via zoom, since the technology was new to them, and since no training was offered by the Ministry. Despite all of this, teachers  have not been recognized nor compensated for what they have been doing these past 17 months. They only continue to receive their meagre monthly salary of something between Rs 30,000 – Rs 35,000. (In 2015 a graduate teacher received Rs 16,500 and in 2019 it had been increased to Rs 33,300. Trained teachers get much less).

In Sri Lanka teachers are the lowest paid group of public servants in all of Asia, and the group that will contribute the most, to creating a new generation of citizens who’d be ready to navigate post-pandemic challenges, economic or otherwise. 

Take a look at public expenditure on education this past decade. 

In terms of % GDP allocated for education, see where Sri Lanka resides:

South Africa: 6.5% of GDP

Sri Lanka: 1.9% of GDP

Israel: 6.1% of GDP

New Zealand: 6.3% of GDP

Viet Nam: 4.2% of GDP

Nepal: 5.1% of GDP

Finland: 6.4% of GDP

Middle income countries: 4.4% of GDP

South Asia: 3.5% of GDP

(Source: World Bank data)

Current face-off: sincerity of purpose

For nearly 25 days teachers & Principals are on the streets, risking escalating health-hazards of the ongoing pandemic, and multiple threats to life. They are demanding that salary anomalies be rectified. This is turning out to be the most organised, justified and non-politically motivated protest seen in decades. The Government has been watching, almost arrogantly, with no sincere efforts to resolve this crisis.

Salaries & Cadre Commissions (SCC) have been in operation for decades. They could have offered solutions, but haven’t. If the excuse by the Government is delay by SCC, the latter could have sat for several hours a day since July, when the protests began, and resolved this issue by now.

Read More