International schools: issues,

problems, myths, and drivel

Fragments.

by Uditha Devapriya-Thursday, November 10, 2016

Patali Champika Ranawaka, at a convention held last week, spoke
on private education and the Kannangara reforms. He spoke on
international schools and argued that they should either be closed
down or be integrated with the country. That is pertinent but
certainly does raise some hairs.
He then implied that while we shouldnt go on a rampage and
shut down such schools in a hurry, nevertheless their proliferation
must not be at the cost of (culturally and socially) castrating our
children. That too is pertinent and that too raises some hairs.
This is not the first time this year that Ranawaka has expressed
such sentiments on the subject. At a ceremony held at the BMICH
last July, he spoke along the same lines, arguing that the need of
the hour in Sri Lanka was a localised education system in English.
He was concerned about the rapid and unchecked proliferation of
international schools in the country and said as much, adding that
such schools did not always provide the qualitatively superior
education we as a nation should promote. Again, pertinent.
The most frequent allegation levelled against private education is
that it hides inequalities and disparities between students under a
fiction of equality. That is true. Merit is not the leveller, profit is.
Ranawaka spoke on the SAITM crisis as well, and cautioned
against the recent rise of private medical colleges, but for the
time being his remarks on international schools merit scrutiny for
the simple reason that while one doesnt have to throw the baby
with the bathwater when it comes to English medium education in
this country, at times its difficult to distinguish between the baby
and the bathwater when it comes to international schools.
There currently are two perspectives when it comes to these

schools. The first is that they are not regulated properly and
hence, tend to compromise on quality. Thats the administrative
argument. The second, echoed by rabble-rousing nationalists, is
that they uproot our children and more often than not impart an
English education in an elitist atmosphere. Thats the cultural
argument. The latter tends to privilege rhetoric over reason, while
the former presents its own solution at once: regulate and subject
such schools to the control of an administrative body.

I think its safe to say that the Board of

Investment (BOI) is more concerned about profit-making entities
than about the potential of such institutions to provide quality
education. The simple fact of the matter is, its difficult to keep a
tab on them: they are everywhere and they can be set up
anywhere. It takes more time to set up a school under the Ministry
of Education, after all, than it does to set up a company or
business organisation.
In the end, naturally enough, when it comes to recruitment,
selection, and pedagogy, teachers are very often behind their
expected skills level and therefore, leave much to be desired. I
am, of course, not talking about established international schools,

which have (as Professor Rajiva Wijesingha once aptly put it) set
up their own administrative systems and checks and balances
that actually surpass their counterparts in the public sector by a
considerable margin.
Does this absolve the public sector? I dont think so. Ranawaka
spoke for an education system in which economic, caste, and
gender disparities were done away with. He forgot to mention
ethnic and religious disparities (he should have), but thats
another story. He also argued for a system whereby the
government and the private sector would hold hands (which is
another way of saying that the government should personally
step in and create a market for education). On the other hand, I
dont believe that this should be taken to whitewash our public
schools.
And its not hard to see why. Administratively they are centralised
and their authority is vested in the government. One need only
flip through the archives to see how the likes of Professor
Wijesingha faced difficulties when reintroducing the English
medium to our schools. To the argument that we were doing our
children a disservice by depriving them of access to the language,
administrators (with probably the most intelligent of responses
they could come up with) retorted that the elite managed to learn
English while studying in the vernacular! In a context where
bureaucracy was privileged and innovation (at best) was
marginalised, hence, I think its safe to say that what ails our local
education system is precisely what thrives in the private sector:
flexibility.
Yes, quality shouldnt dip. But is quality the preserve of the public
sector? Not by a long shot. I mentioned Professor Wijesinghas
attempt at reintroducing the English medium here. I think the best
example for how and why inefficiencies remain in the system is
the way English is taught here. I argued in a previous column, or
rather implied, that as a subject that language is probably the

easiest to get through in the local curriculum. And yet, year after
year, the fail rate for it never goes below 50 percent. The pass
rate barely goes above 45 percent. Why?
Forget maladministration. I dont think bad administrators
necessarily compromise on good teachers. Good teachers,
however, are hard to get. Time and time again, I have come
across testimonies from students, of how teachers fudge it at
their job, how they differentiate between those who can learn
quickly and those who cant, and how, in this process, the latter
get marginalised. In a context where classrooms sometimes pack
up to 50 students I personally dont think one can expect miracles
from teachers, but despite this I wonder: why is a language thats
taught Our Way so hard to pass?

The truth, not surprisingly, is unpalatable:

either teachers are not adequately compensated or worse, they
dont care. Those who rubbish international schools tend to ignore
the harsh truths rampant in the public sphere: unmotivated staff,
desensitised children, and all those other realities which dont
exactly seem as paradisiacal as defenders of the sector tout them
as. Weve lost the free in free education, but instead of trying to

regain it we are content in vilifying the private sector. Nothing

could be more fallacious. Despite its varying quality standards, in
terms of procurement of textbooks, administration, and efficiency
the non-governmental education sector (or to be more precise,
industry) are, I can say honestly, ahead.
Lets not forget, after all, that international schools cater not to
the elite (and I will come to this presently) but to those who a) are
generally affluent (all in all, from the middle class, subject of
course to preferences framed by social background) and b) are
not able to get their children into local schools. Its about demand
and meeting that demand. Its about business as well, but in this
vast, interminable, and globalised world of ours I doubt one can
generalise by saying that such schools should be banned. And as
for the argument that quality dips: of course it does, but I dont
see the kind of rampant corruption, nepotism, and rush to get
ones offspring admitted by hook or crook that I see elsewhere.
Now take the cultural argument. In a context where anything with
the international label tagged on tends to cast aside the
national, it makes sense to surmise that international schools
follow a curriculum far removed from that of our country.
However, going by the logic of those who love to hate these
institutions, what is it exactly about them that their critics take to
task?
On one level I think its the language. More often than not, these
critics echo their visceral distrust of English (in general) in their
even more visceral distrust of international schools. On another
level, its history: the latter are decidedly more recent and hence,
less endowed by a history to make them immune to attack. About
10 years ago, for instance, a newspaper could see it fit to
editorialise the issue by claiming superiority for established
schools, in effect implying that the so-called cream of the crop in
the countrys social, economic, and political spheres were and
continue to be produced by them. In other words, international

schools are culturally uprooted because they lack a tradition of

their own, not (as it should be) because their more established
counterparts elsewhere inculcate local values in their students.

So its not even a question of

history, its a question of tradition! If its about inculcating
traditional values, these critics should be fixated and more
concerned about the lack of facilities in the Madya Maha
Vidyalayas and the deplorable deficits in academic achievement
between Colombo and (among other districts) Moneragala (the
latter of which consistently ranks low in several economic and
social indicators). They are not.
The truth is that they are captivated by tradition, not history
stricto sensu, and in their irrational phobia of international schools
on the basis of culture (or the lack thereof) they forget one key
point: that these institutions provide an opt-out point for those
with cash who couldnt enter the local stream, as much as the
outstation local school provided an opt-out point for those without
cash. Same problem, different solutions.
Forget all that. I still dont buy this cultural argument. What is
there about the cream of the crop that makes them
nationalists? What is it about the cream that warrants praise? A
perusal of history will convince anyone that (and I say this at the
cost of simplifying an already simplified argument) culture was

not the product of the cream but the outsider, the vilified
villager trashed as unrefined and uneducated by the same elite
who came from (supposedly) superior institutions. No, I am not
ranting, because perceptions tend to explain those who subscribe
to them and the elite (real and imagined), going by this, are
(almost) as uprooted as those they love to deride as, yes,
culturally uprooted.
The only reason why the second argument would make sense is
that international schools dont teach history and the vernacular
languages. In other words, they promote the kind of snobbery
that established schools used to in those dark, colonial days. That
is true. The solution, however, isnt to insist on their removal (we
are sadly not the frogs in the well we used to be, and because of
this accursed reality called globalisation we have to have the
cake and suffer it when it comes to English) but to regulate. At
any rate, the international schools rampantly growing in every
nook and corner of the country dont operate on Cambridge and
Edexcel but rather operate on the local curriculum, so (as I
implied before) those trashing such institutions forget that they
dont always teach the Englishmans syllabus but in fact teach the
same subjects that state schools do.

Theres a person who teaches English at a school in Kurunegala.

His name is Wilbert Ranasinghe and he starts his class at five in
the morning. He is so thorough with his subject that all his
students, and by all I mean ALL, speak, write, and read the

language almost perfectly. No, they dont speak with an accent

and no, they dont consider the language as the exclusive
possession of a few for a few, but they use it as they would a
kitchen utensil: for the moment, for its use, and not for the
privileges it (apparently) brings.
Meanwhile, their more established counterparts in Colombo and
the metropolis (by which I include those in international schools)
struggle with a language they are taught from their infanthood,
and along the way fail probably the easiest paper in the entire
local syllabus. An irony of fate, I believe. No, not because the one
lags behind the other, but because the latter, despite their
inability to wield English, consider themselves to be the elite,
those who have a say in the cultural discourse and take it as their
monopoly.
I think we are focusing on the wrong issue(s). Weve confused
tradition for history. We think we know which institutions breed
and perpetuate culture when we dont. We are so entranced by
tradition that we dont (or rather, cant) know who will breed that
culture: not the elite (the new or the old) but the outsider.
Yes, I am raising some hairs. But the sooner we turn away from
the dichotomy between the state and the private sector in
education (and this goes for private universities as well), the
sooner well be able to concentrate on disparities in the former.
The quickest way to bring that about, common sense should
dictate, is heeding what the likes of Ranawaka have been telling
us all along: not to close such institutions in the private sector,
but to bring them closer to our way of life. That, ladies and
gentlemen, is less about complete erasure than about regulation.
And regulation, while were at it, needs reason. Not rhetoric.
Uditha Devapriya is a freelance writer who can be reached at
udakdev1@gmail.com
Posted by Thavam