IN SRI LANKA, the recently proposed educational reforms by the National People’s Power government have incited mixed reactions. These were framed as part of a broader effort by the new administration to address the country’s economic crisis and rethink its development trajectory, particularly by aligning education more closely with employment and skills-based training. While many agree that reforms are timely, leftist sections within Sri Lankan academia – not altogether unsympathetic to the present regime – remain suspicious of the vision of the prime minister, Harini Amarasuriya, who also serves as the minister of education. Notably, the “Kuppi Collective” – a group of leftist academics – released a statement outlining the shortcomings of the proposed reforms, such as the sidelining of social sciences and humanities and an increased emphasis on vocational training from as early as grade nine, where students are expected to take a “career test”.
Many interpret such moves as a departure from the foundational principles associated with Sri Lanka’s first education minister, C W W Kannangara, and his 1943 reforms to establish free, state-funded education as a central pillar of postcolonial nation-building in the country.
This enduring commitment to “free” education, and the mistrust of reforms that align schooling more closely with labour-market demands, are something of an anomaly in an increasingly neoliberal global order in which education is often treated as an economic instrument rather than a public good. In a debt-ridden country such as Sri Lanka, education pursued for its own sake is frequently cast as a luxury few can afford. And the current debate is not new.
To understand why education continues to provoke such intense contention in Sri Lanka, one must look back. In Development, Education and Learning in Sri Lanka, the academic Angela W Little shows how disputes over education have long mirrored the country’s deeper struggles over equality, languages, class and development.