Education reform: A method to madness

Sri Lanka’s education system today is a portrait of disorder.

- By Bradley Emerson

Textbooks are riddled with errors. Examinations delayed or mismanaged. Curricula trapped in outdated paradigms. These are not isolated incidents, they point to a deeper crisis. Our children are caught in the crossfire of bureaucratic negligence, while teachers struggle with inadequate training, poor resources, and shifting directives that undermine their authority.The madness reveals itself most starkly in the desperate competition for access to quality schools. Each year, nearly half a million children sit for the Grade 5 scholarship examination, not as a celebration of merit, but as a survival strategy to escape under-resourced village schools and gain entry to metropolitan institutions. This exam has become a symbol of systemic inequality, a lottery for opportunity in a country where education should be a universal right.

The absence of conscious development of schools outside urban centers has deepened this divide. More than 1,300 schools still lack basic toilet facilities, exposing children to indignity and health risks. Teacher shortages, particularly in science, mathematics, and English, leave classrooms without the trained professionals needed to prepare students for the future.

The madness does not end at school. Of the 300,000 students who sit for Advanced Level examinations each year, only about 30,000 gain admission to universities, and the majority of those places are in Arts faculties. This structural imbalance has created a growing pool of unemployed graduates, a generation educated but excluded from meaningful participation in the economy. The mismatch between what universities produce and what the labour market demands is widening, turning higher education into a conveyor belt of frustration rather than opportunity.