It looks like you were hasty in your reply You should read my postings again.
I said our current system won’t, but a good education system will. In fact that is the most fundamental goal of education, tought by Aristotle. Leave aside the classics, there is a vast amount of modern literature on that premise, but then you as forum coordinator are probably already familiar with them. If by chance you aren’t, I suggest starting with

Investment in Learning
The Individual and Social Value of American Higher Education
Howard R. Bowen
ISBN: 1-56000-888-1
1996, Transaction Publishers.

Regarding the rest of your rebuttal, I have nothing further to say than what I’ve already said.

I am not implying private schools should fill the gap, I am insisting they should, and they should have the freeedom to charge fees..

Just what does Ashely mean by saying the choice should be available but money should not be the differentiator. THe government taxes and spends it on schooling. If Mahabodhi Society wants to start another Musaeus College in Matara or somewhere, how are they going to get the money if they don’t charge tuition. THen take the case of a woman from Kamburupitiya who goes to middle east and decides that the best investment for her money is not to buy jewellery that she ends up burying in the back yard to prevent robberies but to wishes to send her daughter to a good school that opens middle clas doors to the child. Sujatha Vidyalaya or another popular school is going out of the question for her. Entry to those are already captured by the middle class and the girl is not the type to cram for 5th grade scholarship exam. What is she to do? Wait for utopia where politicans serve and public servant do their duty? Why should not she have a choice. The poor has many faces and pocket-books of varying sizes.

The reasons you give for Norway and Iceland not being good examples are valid, but not for what I meant them to be. I believe they are good examples of what can be achieved with a well thought out education policy, because I also believe their pot is large partly due to their investment in education. The factors barring Sri Lanka from emulating them can all be boiled down to the lack of education. Corruption, poverty, ethnic violence, religious prejudice, gender bias, the feed-me mentality, you name it, they’re all rooted in ignorance (the opposite of which is admittedly beyond the generally accepted academic kind of education, still achievable along that path). It’ll take selfless leadership and a few generations after change is initiated, to get ourselves out of this mire.

Norway and Iceland are not good examples. In those countries, the pot (GDP) is large and the spooning-out is fair (governance). In developing countries such as ours the pot is small and the spoon is captured by elite groups (politicians, their supporters, and government officials) in the name of free education.

My post was not about the free-of-charge provision of primary and secondary education. There is no question that primary and secondary education should be offered free to low income groups if not to all school-age children. My concern is about the effective banning of private education and forcing public education on everybody in a country where the public sphere is corrupt and ineffective.

Tez’s link to the Friedman show is a little ahead of the argument. The debate there was not about the right of private institutions to offer primary and secondary education because the American constitution would not allow legislation that bars individual freedom. The debate in the USA is whether the students attending those private schools should receive government aid in the form of vouchers.

In Sri Lanka we are still in square one, seeking the right to operate private schools and having those students have the right to sit for public exams and be eligible for admission to public universities. The fight for vouchers too need to happen.

On a different, more personal note, do you know anything about homeschooling in Sri Lanka? Whether it happens at all, for starters? I’m not sure if this is considered a subset of “private schooling”. I understand that homeschooling is obviously not a viable option for low-income parents and is therefore not a general solution for anything, but for middle-class folks who are sufficiently worried and sufficiently obstinate -and I count myself in this category- it’s something to think about.

Why would one look to Russia or China for a model ?
If I were looking for a system worth emulating, I’d start, well since this only an illustration, how about the UNDP human development report ?
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/
Let’s just pick the top 3 countries.

#1 Norway
To quote from the Norway ministry of education
http://odin.dep.no/kd/english/topics/education/014081-120036/dok-bn.html
“Education for all is a basic precept of Norwegian educational policy.
Wherever they live in the country, all girls and boys must have an equal
right to education, regardless of social and cultural background and
possible special needs. All public education in Norway is free up to and
including the upper secondary level.”

#2 Iceland
(http://www.icelandexport.is/english/about_iceland/educational_system_in_iceland/)
“Educational system in Iceland is one of the best in the world. The fundamental
principle of the Icelandic educational system is that everyone should have
equal opportunities to acquire an education, irrespective of sex, economic status,
residential location, religion, possible handicap, and cultural or social
background.”

#3 Australia
To quote from the Adelaide declaration on National Goals for schooling
(http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/policy_initiatives_reviews/national_goals_for_schooling_in_the_twenty_first_century.htm)
“all students have access to the high quality education necessary to enable
the completion of school education to Year 12″
I couldn’t find an authoritative source, but read in various web pages that public schools were free. Their private schools serve 32% of the student population. So there’s a country to look at for a model of privatization.

ok, so using UNDP report as a basis can be argued to be arbitrary. My point is there are some countries that have successful implementations of a free education policy and they seem to have reaped the benefits.

The kind of ideal that Ashley and many others use to end their arguments is a very difficult one to counter, considering that it took countries like Soviet Union and China many many years to experiment and learn. Here is a quote from the 2005 Annual report from Central Bank-the guys who have to decide whether to allocate money to school lunches or provide more free-of-charge tertiary education.

International studies show that the social rate of return of
primary and secondary education is significantly higher
than the private rate of return. This justifies the continuation
of public investment in primary and secondary education.
However, the private rate of return is higher in tertiary
education, thus indicating that it is reasonable to charge
individuals for their tertiary education.
[Central Bank of Sri Lanka Annual Report - 2005, page 54]
.