Sri Lanka - Institut de statistique de l'Unesco

Out-of-School Children in Sri Lanka: Country Study
Teacher deployment and training
The teaching force in Sri Lanka numbers 215,141, of whom 71.2 percent are women. However,
the impact of gender norms appears to account for the fact that only 25 percent of school
principals are women.
A major policy issue that impacts the quality of education available for children in disadvantaged
communities is the inequitable distribution of teachers, and shortages of teachers in critical
subjects juxtaposed with surplus teachers in others. It has been claimed that the use of the
uniform ‘ready reckoner’ computation in allocating teachers to schools has perpetuated the
inequitable distribution of teachers over the years. More pernicious is the deviation from
recruitment policies by politicization of deployment, transfer and promotion practices. A third
factor is the reluctance of teachers to work in schools with minimal amenities and those located
in difficult areas. The proposal in the ESDFP to allocate an allowance amounting to 40 percent of
salary to teachers in remote and difficult areas as an incentive has been accepted but has yet to
be implemented as a result of budgetary constraints. Consequently, schools in disadvantaged
locations continue to be marginalized with respect to qualified and committed teachers and are
vulnerable to closure as ‘uneconomic’ and inefficient institutions, resulting in deprivation for the
very poor of their right to education. The gulf between policy and practice remains wide and
largely unbridged.
Teacher education is conducted from diploma to graduate and postgraduate levels by university
faculties and departments of education, the National Institute of Education (NIE), 17 National
Colleges of Education, and nine Teacher Training Institutes. In-service training is conducted by
these institutions and, to a limited extent, by the 100 Teachers’ Centres that were established for
this purpose in the last decade but have been underutilized as a conduit for in-service teacher
development at the local level. The NIE has tended to rely on the ‘cascade’ form of training, i.e.,
NIE staff training in-service advisers (ISAs) functioning at local level, and ISAs training teachers
in their districts/divisions. However, evaluation studies have been critical of the resultant uneven
and poor quality of training received by teachers from ISAs of varying quality, in particular their
inability to transfer requisite knowledge and skills to teachers (Perera, 2008, 2009; Jayaweera,
2010). The consequences of these inadequacies are seen in the statements made by some
students who have dropped out of school that they found lessons boring, teachers negligent and
abusive, and schooling unattractive (MOE et al., 2009; Jayaweera and Gunawardena, 2009). Nor
do teachers, as potential change-agents, appear to have acquired knowledge of and sensitivity to
issues such as human rights, social equity, gender equality, and national harmony that impinge
on the issue of equal educational opportunity and ‘education for all’. A telling illustration is the
claim by students from poverty groups that teachers have no empathy and are indifferent to their
educational needs and inflict harsh punishments that precipitate dropping out of school
(Jayaweera and Gunawardena, 2009).
Policies that are directed at overcoming shortages and uneven distribution of teachers are
important primarily for children in Dimensions 4 and 5 but also for encouraging children in
Dimensions 2 and 3 to enrol in school. Policies and programmes that aim to improve the quality
of teacher training have a great impact on improving the quality of teaching and thus on reducing
the level of dropout and keeping children in Dimensions 4 and 5 in school.
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