English Medium Education

Present government policy on the medium of instruction in the public school system

(Text of a talk delivered in July 2004)

Let me begin by stating that it seems to me incontestable that the goals of any government with regard to education should be equity and excellence. It was I believe in pursuit of these that over half a century ago the government decreed that the medium of education in all schools should be the mother tongue.

This was in fact laid down by regulation in the early fifties, though the move was gradual and only came to full fruition in the sixties when the science stream too came under the regulation nationwide. There had been an attempt earlier, in the forties, proposed in fact by J R Jayewardene in the State Council, to make Sinhala compulsorily the medium of education. He included Tamil as well in the motion, when the inequity of only specifying Sinhala therein was pointed out to him. That attempt was defeated by what could be termed the old guard, but the compromise was that mother tongue should be compulsorily the medium of instruction at primary level, with choice being permitted at secondary level. This concession was, as I have mentioned, removed by regulation in the early fifties, when Nugawela Dissawe I believe was Minister of Education.

I believe, in all fairness to the Young Turks of yesteryear, that they were motivated by ideals and thought this was the way to ensure excellence and equity. After all most children did not in those days have access to English, so they felt that a two tier system precluded equity. They also believed that children learnt best in their mother tongue, and therefore progress would be limited if they had to, or even chose to, learn in English.

Unfortunately, as we have seen, the system as it now stands has promoted neither excellence nor equity. The privileged who have access to English with or without help from their schools continue to do better, in both senses of the word. They end up learning more, and they get better jobs. Indeed, as though to prove the importance of English in this respect, when the elite realized that their children would lag behind despite having English at home if they were compelled to learn in the mother tongue at school, they started what are termed International Schools. Beginning with the Colombo International School in the early eighties, these have now mushroomed all over the country.

Despite the importance of English now being generally accepted, we have to recognize that there are still those who would turn the clock back. The more extreme of these believe that it is precisely because the elite continues to function in English that equity has not been achieved. They go so far as to say that if the private sector stopped functioning in English, like the public sector, equity will be achieved. In saying this they skate over the questions not only of excellence but of national harmony. Such dinosaurs however are very few now, and it is the less extreme position we need to consider. Its proponents grant that English, as an international language, cannot be abolished in this fair island alone. They claim however that English medium education, apart from being a colonial hangover, cannot be provided satisfactorily nationwide, and therefore it should not be permitted. Their solution is to improve the teaching of English as a second language.

This ignores the fact that English has officially been taught as a second language from the fifties onwards, and standards have been steadily declining. Now I have some sympathy with the argument that this is due largely to incompetence but, as Hayek has pointed out, such incompetence is almost endemic in a monopolistic system. In Sri Lanka it can only get worse as recruitment into the public sector of those competent in English declines. And in any case I believe due consideration should be given to the claim of students that a principal reason for English standards being so bad, despite it being officially taught in school over so many years, is that they have absolutely no opportunity to practise outside the short period allocated to the subject every day.

It was such considerations, and the need of course to promote excellence, in a context in which English is generally required for access to knowledge beyond what is taught in the classroom, that motivated the government four years ago to restart English medium education in public schools. Initially this was begun in Advanced Level Science classes, where empowering students all over the country to read and understand supplementary material seemed vital. Given that universities, recognizing the importance of this, and of keeping up with new knowledge, have basically returned to English as the medium of instruction in Science courses, students without a working knowledge of English were suffering.

Planning for the programme was thorough, but there was some resistance at the NIE, which was dubious either about the concept or its own capacity to deliver the required training. It was also found that students were diffident, given the enormous importance of marks at the Advanced Level Examination. They knew that their own English was weak, given the system of teaching it as a second language now in place in schools, and they felt they would therefore do badly in the examination.

Recognizing this, as well as the need to provide access to English more quickly to a wider range of students, the Ministry decided in 2001 to permit English medium teaching from Grade 6 onward. The President was deeply committed to this programme, seeing it also as a way of facilitating interaction between students of different communities who are now kept apart by the education system which compartmentalizes students according to medium. A Cabinet paper which designated schools embarking on English medium as Amity schools was passed in the middle of 2001, and Zonal Directors were invited to seek volunteers, in the hope that there would be at least one such school in each Zone.

Some Zonal Directors were enthusiastic, others not. Towards the end of 2001 nearly 100 schools had identified themselves, and training programmes were begun and translation of books was commenced. The first materials for teaching students three subjects in English in Grade 6 were despatched to schools in January 2002, and the programme commenced.

By then however there had been a change of government, and the new Prime Minister was not keen on the programme. There is an element of consistency in this, since as Minister of Education in the eighties he had actually sought to put a stop to International Schools, and had sent the papers to the Attorney General’s Department to prosecute the Colombo International School. However, as he complained at the time, that school had been brought under the Ministry of Local Government, Housing and Construction and his writ did not extend to it.

We must assume that he acted in all good faith, and was motivated by the same considerations of equity and excellence that, in the context of the forties, had seemed so important to J R Jayewardene. Fortunately the Minister of Education in 2002 had a more modern outlook and was enthusiastic in his support of the programme. His contribution to keeping the programme going should be appreciated, though he proved powerless to ensure the logistical support that would have made it as successful as originally envisaged.

Between 2002 and 2003 then, books were not produced in time and training was almost forgotten. It was only towards the end of that period, after strenuous urging by the National Education Commission, that planning began to be coherent and, early in 2004, an Adviser on the programme was recruited to the Ministry. He has begun to structure training in a systematic fashion, and to use the NIE – which unfortunately continued dubious about the programme – to train trainers who would thereafter replicate training in the provinces.

The Minister’s enthusiasm meanwhile had led to the Project being extended to over 300 schools, though in many schools numbers declined drastically. The Prime Minister’s claim that, since things were not going well, he had advised the Minister to stop the Project, did not help. With books being delayed, with model questions not being provided despite several reminders, with training forgotten as it seemed, all this permitting personnel at the Ministry opposed to the Project to claim that it would soon be stopped, it is likely that, had the government not changed earlier this year, the Amity School project would have collapsed. This would have prevented any revival of a policy decision to implement English medium education nationwide.

This does not mean that English medium education would have stopped altogether in public schools. It would have continued in schools that have the resources to run such programmes on their own, the private schools that follow the government curriculum and a few public schools in urban areas. When for instance books were delayed some time back, students in Royal were advised to buy a textbook produced by one of the International Schools. Rs 700, which is what I gather the book cost, may not have meant much to a few students at Royal College, but it would have put English medium education out of the reach of the majority of students in this country.

In that respect, the President’s insistence that this Project is a means of reinforcing equity has to be maintained as an absolute requirement. In reconstituting the Units responsible for English at the Ministry, the President, as Minister of Education, and the Secretary, have made it absolutely clear that our primary responsibility must be ensuring equity with excellence. The new Director General of the NIE has also acted swiftly to ensure action in this respect, and established a Committee with responsibility to ensure that the materials are developed and provided as required, so that provincial schools now having doubts about the programme will be reassured.

The greatest worry at the moment concerns those schools who commenced the programme in 2002, where students will be entering Grade 9 next year. At this stage it is vital to give subject specialists the training necessary for them to impart learning with confidence, and to this end the Ministry has designated the Penideniya Training College as a dedicated facility to supplement the work done already by the NIE which has begun to be replicated in the Provinces. The Educational Publications Department has committed itself to providing the new books by the end of August, so that training can proceed apace, and it has already been advised on the need to plan for required materials for Commerce too for Grade 10 in 2006, since the opportunity must be made available to students entering all streams in the educational system.

Of course there are problems. We certainly do not have the resources now to extend English medium education to all schools in the country, but the argument still occasionally put forward, that it would be unfair to permit English medium education until all can have it, is absolute nonsense. The point is that students must have the right to choose, bearing in mind that such choice will have to be exercised through schools – which in effect means a decision by Principals, in consultation with teachers and parents, as to whether the school has the will and the resources to embark on the programme.

The responsibility of the Ministry, and the Provincial Ministry, is to ensure that materials are provided, and training given to teachers who are willing to undertake the responsibility. It is not the responsibility of the Ministry to provide new teachers, though this may have to be done with regard to schools already in the programme who did not receive the promised training for teachers who were ready to undertake the programme three years ago. Those particular schools require some special assistance over the next few months, but that is well in hand.

One factor that is often forgotten by those who claim the project cannot go on is that training the teachers is not actually such a difficult task, assuming that they have been properly trained to conduct classes in Sinhala and Tamil. The content of the course has not changed, nor has the methodology. Thus I cannot quite understand the enormous efforts made by officials in the last couple of years to translate syllabuses and teachers guides, since presumably teachers in the system were well acquainted with these in the mother tongue. Rather, the thrust should be to translate and ensure familiarity with terms, and to give teachers the knowledge of English that will enable them to teach satisfactorily. In many cases this is largely a confidence building exercise, since the university graduates who teach in the higher classes have had significant levels of English at university, even when they are not actually English medium products.

In theory the same should be true of products of Training Colleges and of the pre-service National Colleges of Education. A principal corollary of the project three years ago was ensuring reform and proper delivery of the General English curriculum at NCoEs, and also ensuring proper training for prospective English medium teachers. Unfortunately this too was neglected in the last couple of years though, as instructed by the Director General of the NIE, that too has been taken in hand now. Meanwhile the NEC has recommended dedicating one or two NCoEs to providing English and methodological competence to recent graduates in specific fields so that the Amity School programme can be extended as required in the near future.

With regard to the pedagogical issues involved, while I appreciate the commitment of educationists to the theories they absorbed when they were learning, the simple fact is that theories change all the time, and that all children are different. Whilst it is obvious that most children learn best in their mother tongue, and that education in the mother tongue should be a right, it is also a right to choose not to be educated in the mother tongue. In a context in which there are distinct advantages in acquiring a working knowledge of English early, those parents willing to take the risk should be supported.

Three years ago I accepted the arguments that the government should not begin English medium education at primary level, and I believe that on balance we were correct to devote state support to a project beginning at Grade 6. However there is little doubt that in at least some schools that embarked upon Primary English medium on their own, it has been remarkably successful. In that respect it is tragic that the former Secretary to the Ministry of Education issued a circular that seemed to ban English medium education at other levels. Some schools had indeed, to some extent encouraged by the forward looking Minister, even begun Advanced Level Commerce classes in English, but the Secretary’s circular inhibited all that. Verbal assurances that they could continue are insufficient to restore confidence.

My own view therefore is that the government should make it clear that schools are free to use English medium if they wish at any level, but at the same time they should not expect support in terms of materials or training from the government, except at the specified levels. And I hasten to add that such initiatives will not come only from sophisticated urban areas. When I visited Kalmunai with regard to the Amity Schools Project three years ago, I was delighted to find students at Grade 1 functioning in English, and doubtless as instructed one little girl asked me, ‘When will we get books?’

Parents in such areas recognize the importance of English, and of giving their children the wherewithal to compete with the urban child. All over the country there are imaginative principals able and willing to move forward. In the interests of equity, and the future development of the country, the state must empower people to move forward as quickly as they themselves feel able to.

Rajiva Wijesinha