Tuesday, October 23, 2012

University teachers join protest march of teachers & principals

The Federation of University Teachers Associations (FUTA) has decided to join the protest march organized by teachers’ and principals’ trade unions to be held on the 24th say reports.
It has been reported in the media that teachers’ and principals’ trade unions had decided to take several trade union actions to get solutions for 6 demands they have put forward.
Accordingly, the protest march with the support of university teachers will commence from Rajagiriya roundabout at 10.00 a.m. and march to Isurupaya.

Teachers led by ‘colonels’ to march on Edu. Ministry



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by Dasun Edirisinghe, The Island

Principals and teachers of the State-run schools are scheduled to march to the Education Ministry with several demands tomorrow, according to a JVP affiliated trade union.

The government recently enlisted 30 Class 1 Principals Brevet Colonels.

General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers’ Service Union Mahinda Jayasinghe told The Island the protest march would start from the Ayurveda roundabout Rajagiriya and end with a demonstration opposite the Education Ministry, Isurupaya.

He said that they would hold the protest march and demonstration to force education authorities to grant their six demands.

"Our main demand is the implementation of the recommendations made by the Cabinet of ministers in 2008 to rectify the anomalies in salaries of principals and teachers," Jayasinghe said.

He said that they also demanded immediate solutions to problems as regards their promotions and salary arrears, implementation of the national teachers’ transfer policy, allocation of funds for disaster loans and property loans, allocation of 6 per cent of the GDP for education and an end to political interferences in the education field.

Jayasinghe said that they had held a meeting with Deputy Education Minister Vijithamuni Zoysa and two additional directors on Oct. 18, but it had ended inconclusively.

"We held another discussion with the Deputy Education Minister and Secretary of the Ministry yesterday," he said, adding it, too, had ended without a solution.

The Teachers’ and Principals’ Trade Union Joint Committee has organised the protest march. The TPTUJC includes Ceylon Teachers’ Union, Ceylon Teachers’ Service Union, Independent Teachers’ Union, All Ceylon United Teachers’ Union, National Education Employees Union, Common Education Professionals Union, All Ceylon Principals’ Union and Sri Lanka National Principals’ Union.

FUTA strike: Some issues



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By Eric J. de Silva, The Island

The university teachers’ strike that the government told us had been called off has only been suspended according to FUTA, with every prospect of being resumed - a temporary truce with all the forebodings it has for those who want the universities to function without disruption.

The FUTA strike, which began when negotiations with government for a salary increase for university teachers broke down, took a totally different turn when FUTA deftly tagged on a demand for a 6% allocation of GDP for education to obtain wider support for their struggle. This they succeeded in doing with teachers’ unions and other groups rallying round the 6% banner though many of them did not have a clue as to what it really meant in rupees and cents (if cents do matter)! The fact that the FUTA move paid ample dividends was seen in the haste in which not only mainstream political parties but also nondescript (no insult meant) politicians in search of an identity jumped the FUTA bandwagon as described in a piece I wrote to The Island on 4/10/12 (Jumping the FUTA bandwagon).

6% of GDP for education

Spokespersons for FUTA insisted that the target of ‘6% of GDP for education’ should be reached by 2015 as a Millennium Development Goal which Sri Lanka had subscribed to in 2000, as a member of the United Nations. However, neither the report prepared by the World Bank in 2005 titled ‘Attaining the Millennium Development Goals in Sri Lanka’ (a copy of which I found in my bookshelves) nor relevant websites I checked with gave any indication of there being a MDG to that effect. The Millennium Development Goals subscribed to by 193 member nations of UN and 23 international organizations in 2000 simply read as follows:

1. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger

2. Achieving universal primary education

3. Promoting gender equality and empowering women

4. Reducing child mortality rates

5. Improving maternal health

6. Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

7. Ensuring environmental sustainability, and

8. Developing a global partnership for development.

It will be observed that these goals are more oriented towards eradicating illiteracy, alleviating poverty, improving health, empowering women and protecting the environment. As far as education is concerned, only primary education receives specific mention – obviously as a means of eradicating illiteracy. A meeting held in September 2010 at UN Headquarters in New York had conducted a progress review and concluded with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the above goals by 2015, the targeted year. Thus the FUTA claim does not hold water, unless they can produce documentary evidence to the effect that there is, in fact, a Millennium Development Goal requiring member counties to allocate 6% of GDP for education.

Much has been said about the remark made by the renowned Pakistani scientist, educator, policy maker and former Minister of Science and Technology Prof. Atta ur Rahman about being in a position to advise President Rajapakse as to how 6% of GDP could be allocated to education, if requested to do so. He made this remark in answer to a question posed to him after the excellent lecture he delivered at the SLAAS auditorium on 27th September while the FUTA march from Galle was wending its way to Colombo. There was thunderous applause when he said this, and I too joined in it due to the exhilarating effect his speech had on me! I was naturally curious to know how much Pakistan spends on education and, when I checked the figures later, I found that their expenditure had been 1.9% in 2001, 2.9% in 2009 and 2.4% in 2010. These figures are obviously higher than ours, but nowhere near the 6% mark which had by then virtually become the FUTA trade mark!

What most people forget is that, as Prof. Rahman himself was quick to point out, Pakistan has over the years given greater attention to the apex of the pyramid (higher education) rather than to the base (primary and secondary education). As a result, despite their advances in the area of science and technology which he so graphically described, Pakistan remains among the Low Human Development Countries in terms of the Human Development Index occupying the 145th place out of 187 countries (with 50% of the population deprived of basic necessities of education and health) while Sri Lanka is among the Medium Human Development Countries occupying the 97th place, clearly showing that we have chosen one path and they another!

Pakistan

In this connection, my memory takes me back to a visit I made to Pakistan in the mid eighties when I was invited to join a Sri Lankan delegation led by the then Education Minister with the Secretary of the Ministry and a couple of others in the team. (I was working then as head of a Unesco Project in Sri Lanka). At a brief meeting the delegation had with Prime Minister Junejo (General Zia ul Huq was President at the time) which was more in the nature of a courtesy call than a substantive discussion, he was full of praise for the high standards of literacy (87% in SL as against 30% in Pakistan in 1985) that we had achieved thanks to our school system, and said that Pakistan had a lot to learn from us. He, however, inquired whether we did not see a link between it and youth unrest and the insurrection that followed due to employment opportunities not keeping pace with rising expectations that education brings along with it. While agreeing that there certainly was, we also brought to his attention the benefits that a high rate of literacy had brought about in areas such as health, women’s empowerment and the spread of family planning.

Developments in Pakistan since then are too well-known to bear repetition here. Despite Pakistan’s significant achievements in the field of higher education, science and technology that Prof. Rahman referred to, Pakistan’s present literacy rate of 58% remains among the lowest in the world (while ours is around 94%), and keeping half the population illiterate has not helped to keep violence and terrorism out of the way. What we all know is that these have taken such a heavy toll on Pakistan that their cricket team has to go outside Pakistan’s national boundaries to Abu Dhabi or Dubai to play their matches against visiting teams following the violent attack mounted on our cricketers a few years back, showing that there is no relationship between literacy and insurgent activities.

Need for more funds

It is beyond question that our education sector needs more funds if we are to adequately meet present needs as well as challenges that lie ahead. But funds alone are not sufficient without a proper policy framework, well formulated projects, proper implementation strategies and a competent and professional administration capable of getting the job done, none of which we can claim to have today. Usvatte (The Island 22/8/12) has pointed out that we spend 121 billion rupees per year on education (equivalent to 2% of GDP) at present and that tripling this amount to reach the 6% target would mean an additional 242 billion rupees of government expenditure. Even if, by some miracle, the government is able to considerably increase the government budget for education annually so as to reach the 6% target by 2015, it is my contention that we will not be able to spend so much, unless ‘spending’ means running through the money on ill-conceived projects and hare-brained schemes providing, in the process, ample opportunity for predators of all sorts to line their pockets at public expense. This, surely, is not what we want!