Our Education System Is Broken.

Sri Lankan education system is broken, from the ground up.

Yes this is nothing new, we’ve been calling for a change in the education system for a long time now, different governments, different education ministers all promised to bring a change to it but nothing has seemed to happen.

I’m not going to talk about the school education system, I’ve done my 13 years of schooling, I’m going to talk about the university education system which I’m currently at.

This topic came up when I was talking with a friend of mine, unlike other degrees a medical student in Sri Lanka has a job guranteed for him or her when they enter a university, in that way we are lucky. But this comes with a glitch, your whole career in this country depends on the rank you end up at the final year exam.

To make it even more complicating the rank is based heavily on an MCQ paper that out of the 40 questions a selected few questions are used to rank the students which the participants don’t know.

So this has created a rat race within the system where students only focus on getting the highest marks for the MCQ paper, which also applies for me. Whether we like it or not we have to join the race to get a better position in the ranking of students.

So how is it broken?

Medicine is a practical subject where doctors deal with real people, and because students focus mostly on a written paper than the practical aspect of the subject most students who get better ranks are actually bad when it comes to dealing with patients. And this way is encouraged by the system itself by giving better ranks, classes and distinctions and gold medals.

This is also the same when it comes to other subjects, students are encouraged to cram the books and keep it in their heads and let them loose at the exam and forget the next day. Students are not encouraged to think laterally and creatively.

Students who think laterally, students who think creatively can be better than students who perform well at an exam. Like a medical student who knows how to take care of a patient well but perform poorly at a selected few questions.

So my friend was asking was aren’t we actually giving bad doctors better working facilities because they end up with a good rank but doesn’t know how to take care of a patient?

Unfortunately this is what’s happening in almost all government universities, and unlike medical students, graduates in other fields are not so lucky and they end up protesting asking the government to give them jobs at the government, which is not something that the government has to do after giving free education for nearly 2o years for a student.

On the contrary most private universities are encouraging creativity, and allowing people to think laterally and develop their skills rather than passing exams.

This is one reason why private university students easily beat government university students when it comes to getting jobs at the private sector.

As an example I know some friends who are working without having a degree purely because they are creative and because of the skills they developed. I know some students who get their jobs even before completing their degree.

How can we fix the system?

Government universities have to change their system where students who have the skills get rewarded, not purely based on their exams, a way where students are given marks for their skills and creativity. And not encouraging students purely to cram the books or even discouraging only craming.

Like in many things in the country that has to be changed I don’t see this change happening anytime soon. This post too will fall on deaf ears.