Entries from June 2007 ↓

Is this saving ‘free education’ or using a section of university students to run errands for JVP? 

Please note the timing. This is the first demonstration by IUSF for three years? Where was this IUSF for the last three years? Didn’t this threat to free education exist in the period between 2004-7? Why this sudden interest? Has it or has it not anything to do with the separation of JVP from the political alliance it formed with the ruling PA in 2004? 

It well known how JVP shamelessly used university students to achieve their political goals ever since 1971. (Remember somebody called Mahinda Wijesekera of Vidyodaya?) This has become possible thanks to the political immaturity of the university students of our times, including those who take political science as a subject. So the question is whether the educationalists/policy makers should ever treat such protests seriously or just ignore them because they are nothing more than attempts to gain some mileage for a badly bankrupt political party. 

Another interesting observation is there is one coffin also to represent ‘Open University’ which is a fee levying institute, and which had been at the receiving end of the JVP protests in 1980s. Clearly shows that how much the protesters understand about their objectives. 

(Note: This contribution is from a guest writer and the education forum not necessary endorses all what it publishes. Our intention is to initiate discussions. Your comments are welcome. They all will be published just subjected to basic ethics one would expect in an online forum.)  

Note: We reproduce this item verbatim from Daily News because we see the news value of it from a different perspective. We all know that OBAs and OGAs now exist purely with one objective - getting ones’ offspring admitted to a popular school. They are exclusive elite clubs with membership strictly controlled. It is well known that most of the OBAs and OGAs operate like small mafias. In this environment, it is not a surprise the OBA of Ananda College trying to reinforce its political power by inviting powerful political personalities to its ilk. One can only wonder how many times such invitations are extended to its old boys who have made their mark in areas other than politics (or forces which is again a powerful political entity now) Will Ananda OBA consider inviting all distinguished old-Anandian scholars to OBA as honorary members? 

Honorary OBA membership for distinguished Anandians 

COLOMBO: Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and Navy Commander Vice Admiral Vasantha Karannagoda have been appointed honorary members of the Colombo Ananda College Old Boys’ Association in recognition of their services towards safeguarding national security. 

They received their membership cards from Ananda OBA President Isuru Samarasinghe at a special ceremony at the Defence Ministry. 

Samarasinghe said Presidential Senior Advisor Basil Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, Public Administration and Home Affairs Minister Karu Jayasuriya, UNP Treasurer Tilak Karunaratne, Prof. Harsha Seneviratne, Attorney Gominda Dayasiri, Jayantha Wickramasinghe, Dr. H.S. Perera and Deva Rodrigo are the other leading figures who have been granted honorary membership of the Ananda OBA in recognition of the services in their various fields. 

The Defence Ministry ceremony was also attended by Ananda College OBA Joint Secretaries Jayasiri Ittapana and Dushmantha Karannagoda, Treasurer Asoka Karunaratne and Assistant Secretary Sujeewa Ratnamahal. 

http://www.dailynews.lk/2007/06/29/news23.asp

Looks like JVP has come out of its prolonged hibernation. New posters are plastered all over the city, ostensibly by so called ‘Inter University Student Federation’ but don’t we know better?
 

‘Rata pura upadhi kada vasa damanu!’ they say. No kidding. They want to stop all ‘boutiques that sell degrees’. Will the opposers get the same treatment vice chancellors Prof. Stanley Wijesundera and Prof. Patuwathawithana got? Dunno. On the brighter side, this is better than demanding to stop all those boutiques selling lunch packets. Otherwise, we would starve.
 

So why this sudden interest? Has JVP suddenly discovered that somebody selling degrees on the road side as one would sell string hoppers? Or is this the (n+1)th new phase of their age old battle against the private investments in the education sector?
 

Bulk of JVP MPs (except a handful like Sunil Handunnetthi) have never seen a university lecture room, unless they have dropped in when raining. Lots of them are O/L dropouts who could not complete their education. They are ‘ata-pass’ only because there was no examination at Grade 8. So one would wonder why these good gentlemen have such a keen interest in university education. 
 

Anyway, these are few other questions that come to the mind of anyone. Publishing them here does not mean anybody expect JVP to answer them.
 

o       Why this protest only against ‘selling tertiary education’? Why not demand all ‘boutiques that sell education’ (be it school education, diplomas, vocational training etc) be closed? Doesn’t JVP know that more than 75% of the school children in Sri Lanka now attend private tuition classes?
 

o       What is wrong in private investments in education when it is clear the state cannot provide quality university education to all the students that rightly deserve it?
 

o       If JVP wants the degree boutiques (upaadhi kada) to be closed, what do they want upaadhi dan-sel, the service sector version of what we see for vesak and poson? What guarantee JVP has on the quality of the education provided by these upaadhi dan-sels?
 

o       When they formed the ‘sandhaanaya’ government with the PA in 2004,  JVP promised the people of this country (by their ‘rata perata’ manifesto) that they would uplift the university education and especially start new six universities. May we ask what happened to these six universities? Did bahiravaya ate them all?
 

o       What right JVP and opposition political party, to demand to stop any legitimate and ethical business run by somebody? Will they tomorrow demand all boutiques that see lunch packets to be closed?

(Contributed by a guest writer. Open for discussion)

Microsoft plans to start testing a new education PC called IQ PC and an education channel on its MSN portal in India next month. 

The India launch of the IQ PC and education channel will be the first worldwide. It is part of Microsoft’s “Unlimited Potential” program, which aims to use technology to increase the reach of education, said a spokeswoman for Microsoft India on Wednesday. 

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced the Unlimited Potential program in April. 

The new education PC, which is a combination of online and offline content, is likely to be priced at about Indian Rupees 21,000 ($513). It runs on a Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor, and comes bundled with software from both Microsoft and local partners offering educational software. 

Microsoft also announced Wednesday the launch of the MSN IQ Beta Education Channel, which will be a repository of educational and “edutainment” content. Students will have access online to curriculum, tutoring, competitive exam coaching, entertainment, references and counseling, the company said. 

Students will be able to access the education channel through the IQ PC and from shared PCs at Internet cafes, the spokeswoman said. 

Microsoft has partnered with Indian PC makers Zenith Computers of Mumbai and Wipro of Bangalore. Selecting AMD as a partner for the pilot program was only coincidental and Microsoft is also working with Intel Corp. on other similar initiatives, the spokeswoman said. 

“There is a lot more coming in this area from Microsoft,” the spokeswoman said. For example, the company has already trained over 100,000 teachers in India on using computers in education through its Project Shiksha, she said. 

Microsoft Research in Bangalore is also working on technologies that will make computers more accessible and affordable to students, and has developed a technology called MultiPoint that allows several computer mice to be used with a PC simultaneously. This technology is targeted at schools in India and other countries that cannot afford to give each student a PC. 

The concept of the IQ PC has been researched extensively by Microsoft, but the company plans to run test programs of the PC and the MSN Education Channel first in Bangalore and Pune, the spokeswoman said. The country-wide roll out will be in November. 

“Our focus is on making IT accessible, and affordable, and also relevant by offering content and services relevant to the local requirements,” the spokeswoman said. 

The IQ PC is not cheap by Indian standards. A number of entry-level PCs are less expensive. However, Microsoft holds that the price will be attractive because of the software, Internet connectivity and other tools and services bundled with the product.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/06/27/Microsoft-education-PC-India_1.html

A group of girls returning home from school in Afghanistan’s Logar province recently did not for a moment expect what lay ahead.  

As they walked down a dirt track, insurgents sprang out of the parched farms and began firing on them. 

Some of them fled into the farm, but two girls, one aged 13, the other 10, were killed in the ambush. Three of their friends were wounded. 

This kind of attack on schoolchildren, the first incident of its kind in Afghanistan, highlights how the insurgents are trying to disrupt education in the war-ravaged nation. 

A surge in violence over the past year threatens to neutralise the gains made by the country in sending its children back to school after the fall of the Taleban. 

In the past 13 months, 226 schools, many run from tents, have been burnt down by the insurgents. A total of 110 teachers and students have been killed in incidents of indirect violence and another 52 wounded, officials say. 

The Taleban also shut down 381 schools, the majority of them in provinces like Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan where they have a formidable presence. 

This is depressing news when you consider that more than six million Afghan children have returned to schools in the past six years - a sevenfold increase from the 900,000 children, all of them boys, who were going to school during the Taleban rule. 

The number of teachers has also leapt from a paltry 21,000 to 143,000 during the same period. The government says it is hiring 10,000 teachers this year alone. 

Now the attack on the schoolchildren has sent shock waves through the government. 

“I am devastated. I am very worried that such incidents will make parents very scared to send their children to school,” says Afghan Education Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar. 

The insurgents have in the past burnt down schools in the night, and fired rockets to destroy some. They have been distributing “night letters” asking the Afghans to stop working for the government and going to schools. 

It is not difficult to destroy schools in Afghanistan - only 40% of the 8,500 schools in the country are run out of buildings. The rest operate out of tents or are simply run under trees. 

Officials worry that the Taleban may have begun targeting school children because of the “relative success” of a programme to protect schools. 

Over the past eight months, the government has spent $500,000 launching what it calls a “special school protection programme” - which works by groups of parents and local villagers keeping a watch on the schools, sometimes keeping licensed guns. 

Some 1,000 schools have been covered under the programme, and officials say the protection scheme is yielding results - 35 of the 381 schools shut down by the Taleban have been reopened. 

Untrained teachers 

“This has worked quite a bit. When the insurgents see that the local community is protecting the school, they usually don’t challenge,” says Mr Atmar. 

But the success of this programme could be the reason why the insurgents have now begun targeting schoolchildren as they find it difficult to attack schools guarded by local people. 

The only hope may be the fact that there is finally a high premium on education in Afghanistan - and most parents don’t want to take their children out of the schools because of the violence, yet. 

“When I went to the school in Logar to meet parents after the recent attack, the first thing that they told me was: ‘Please do not close the school down. We will give your more ideas for the protection of the school,’” says Mr Atmar. 

As it is there are enough problems - 80% of the teachers are untrained, and at $60 a month, an Afghan teacher’s salary is among the lowest in the world. A little over 6% of the government’s non-defence budget is spent on education. 

‘Government’s responsibility’ 

Analysts are critical of how little the government continues to spend on education; neighbouring Tajikistan, for example, spends three times more on teaching its children. 

Now faced with insurgent attacks on children, the government reckons it would need a quarter of the country’s existing 60,000-strong policemen to guard the schools alone. That is not possible, say officials. 

Ultimately, the government will need to ramp up security and pour money into education to spread learning in the country. 

Otherwise, a time may soon arrive when parents begin to pull children out of schools, fearing for their lives. 

“How much can villagers do in fighting armed insurgents? It is ultimately the government’s responsibility to secure its children,” says a school teacher. 

If insecurity wrecks the dreams of children to get educated, it will be a significant setback for Afghanistan in its efforts to make a new beginning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6768801.stm 

This is a plea for our good professors of science to step up to the role of professors of conscience.

Our universities are disaster zones.  Productive scholars are not tolerated. What do they do? Leave the country? Stay here and be bitter? There is a third way. Carve out your little domain of influence and make a little oasis in the middle of a wasteland.

Prof. VK Samaranayake created the Colombo School of Computing and reigned there until he died. Prof. Gunapala Nanayakkara created his own kingdom in the form of the Post-graduate Institute of Management as far away from University of Sri Jayawardena as possible.

While the above two professors’ skill at political maneuvering is legendary, others have created oasis for themselves with the power of their scholarship. Prof. Eric Karunanayake got an Institute of Biotechnology. Now Prof. Gamini Rajapakse gets an Institute of Nanotechnology.

Meanwhile, there is no end to the turmoil in our universities. An undergraduate who was supposed to report to our office for industrial placement could not do so because she got hit by a rock the day before. Apparently the raggers who lost the election by a wide margin beat up the anti-raggers. The student Samantha died and no justice is in sight.  The story is that, raggers are remotely controlled by the JVP but there is no organized group to support the anti-raggers.

I used to believe in creating oases in the middle of wasteland with the hope these oases would grow out the wasteland but I am not so sure anymore. . We can still have our oasis but we need get out from there occasionally use our good name to ‘Speak Truth to Power”.

A delegation made up of Prof. Ravi Silva (expat), Prof. Gihan Amarathunga (expat), Prof. Sirimalee Fernando, Prof. Gamini Rajapaksaand Dr. Nobel Jayasooriya have met with the president to impress upon him the importance of nanotech. We do need an institute of nanotech, but that is a different matter.

What we need is a permanent delegation of professors of conscience who can impress upon or shame our politicians to give the leadership for real changes in our universities.

Almost two thirds of homosexual pupils in Britain’s schools have suffered homophobic bullying, a survey suggests. 

Almost all of those had experienced verbal bullying but 41% had been physically attacked, while 17% said they had received death threats. 

The study was done by the Schools Health Education Unit for campaign group Stonewall, which said adults in schools were often behind the bullying. 

The government said that all forms of bullying were unacceptable. 

Stonewall said the report, on the views of 1,145 young people, was the largest poll of its kind ever conducted in Great Britain. 

It presented “a shocking picture of the extent of homophobic bullying undertaken by fellow pupils and, alarmingly, school staff”. 

“Even if gay pupils are not directly experiencing bullying, they are learning in an environment where homophobic language and comments are commonplace,” the report said. 

“Ninety-eight per cent of young gay people hear the phrases ‘that’s so gay’ or ‘you’re so gay’ in school, and over four fifths hear such comments often or frequently.” 

Half of teachers had failed to respond to homophobic language when they heard it and less than a quarter of schools had told pupils that homophobic bullying was wrong. 

There have been ongoing complaints from Stonewall that faith schools in particular do nothing to deter homophobia. 

Seven out of 10 of the survey respondents who had experienced bullying said it had adversely affected their school work. 

Half of those bullied said they had missed school as a result. 

When schools did intervene, the report said, young people were 60% less likely to be bullied. 

The report highlights numerous examples of youngsters’ experiences of verbal and physical assaults. 

Stonewall’s chief executive, Ben Summerskill, said: “These deeply disturbing figures should serve as a wake-up call to everyone working in education. 

“This remains one of the few sorts of bullying about which too many schools still take no action. 

“It blights the lives not just of gay children but of thousands of pupils perceived to be lesbian or gay too.” 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6239098.stm

 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) will convene a forum in Sri Lanka from 26 to 28 June to bring together Deans of Education from four Asian countries to prepare plans to integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) into teacher education.
From 26-28 June, UNESCO Bangkok, in cooperation with project partners Japanese Funds-in-Trust (JFIT), Microsoft (initiating partner) and Cisco Systems, will convene a forum for Deans of Education from Teacher Education Institutes (TEIs) from Sri Lanka, India, Cambodia and Indonesia:
In this forum, convened as part of the UNESCO the Next Generation of Teachers (Next Gen) project, Deans will collectively explore the challenges of integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) into teacher education and will develop plans for implementing the Next Gen project activities in their respective Teacher Education Institutes.
The forum, to be convened in Colombo, Sri Lanka, follows the Bangkok Deans’ Forum, held in May 2007, which was attended by Deans from TEIs in Lao PDR, Malaysia, People’s Republic of China, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
According to Dr. Molly Lee, Co-ordinator of the Asia-Pacific Programme of Educational Innovation for Development (APEID) at UNESCO Bangkok, the first Deans Forum was a great success. UNESCO expects that the Sri Lanka forum too will likewise draw attention to the changes needed in teacher education institutions in the Asia-Pacific region.
Like the Bangkok event, the Colombo forum will provide an opportunity for Deans to discuss issues relating to the integration of ICT into teacher education and to plan institutional change. The forum will also enable the building of networks and collaboration between the various TEIs. Dr Lee added that institutional changes will contribute to UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) programme by encouraging new ways of thinking and behaving and by facilitating access to information that will enable the organisation to find more sustainable ways of living.

http://www.dailymirror.lk/2007/06/25/news/6.asp

According to the latest SLICTA report on IT industry, in 2006 Sri Lanka needed nearly 5000 graduates but only 1900 graduates were available locally for a short fall of 3000 graduates. SLICTA’s predicted shortfall for 2007 is 5000 (full report at ).

Year Demand Supply
2005 4920 1235
2006 4920 1887
2007 7672 2216

These data are based on a survey of IT industries conducted by MJ Consulting.
How realistic are these numbers? ((Why is the demand same in 2005 and 2006?). Do we really have that many jobs going begging in the IT industry? For those of you in the IT industry do these numbers sound right?

Even if we halve the estimated demand, the more interesting story, I believe, is the dismal response of our public university system with respect to the demand. For a start the university system is not even able to give us the graduation numbers. The UGC statistics gives enrolment figures for computer science/IT for 2005 and 2006 but no. The total enrollment in 2005 was 398 but no graduation data.
Using enrollment data we can make a generous estimate and say that the universities produced less than 400 graduates in 2005. (The pass rate at external BIT is really really low but I don’t have numbers. Anecdotally, I know that it is hard to find a competent people to teach for the external BIT.)

Compare the 400 or less produced in 2005 by the public sector to the 909 or more produced by local private institutions in the same year (see Education Forum’s full report for details). These private institutions met Sri Lanka’s IT human resource needs by twice as much or more than the public sector, with no thanks government patronage. One might even say they did this despite government (see our previous post about the irresponsible/hypocritical behavior of Minister Susil Premachandra and his political friends).

What does ICTA has to say about the dismal performance of the public IT education sector? Should not they have seen the coming demand?
What do Universities of Colombo and Moratuwa have to say? According to UGC, in 2005 Colombo enrolled 245 and Moratuwa enrolled 110. Moratuwa is a newcomer, but shame on Colombo. Very poor output for all the hoopla they created, I think.
In fact, what do these data say about the effectiveness of late Prof VK Samaranayake who dominated the ICT education field for last 30 years or so?
———————————————————————————————————- Summary of results from a survey conducted by the Education forum in 2006.

Total number of degrees awarded locally by private institutions = 909

Foreign degrees awarded locally by private institutions = 511

Local degrees awarded locally by private institutions = 398

(333 of the local degrees were awarded by SLIIT, a quasi private institution)

See the report for details.

Dharma Sri Abeyratne

COLOMBO: The Rajarata University will not be reopened until the students vacate the University premises, University sources said.

The students say they don’t vacate the administrative building until their demands are addressed by the adminstration.

The university premises has been declared out of bounds after the students forcefully entered into the administrative building. Following this, the students last Friday surrounded the administrative building and forcefully held Vice Chancellor Prof. K. A. Nandasena hostage for over four hours.

The students say, they have to undergo severe hardships as a result of the insufficient hostel facilities.

There are over 2,000 students at the university but only 370 were provided with hostel facilities. Students demand that the police barracks inside the university premises should be converted into student hostels.