Free education and poverty alleviation

December 29, 2013, 12:00 pm 

by Sompala Gunadheera, the island

I admire my colleague, Dr. P. G. Punchiheva’s dedication to our mutual roots as evinced by his letter to The Island of December 28,under the title "Scrapping of Grade 5 Schol Exam: some issues". I have myself expressed my reservations on the proposed move to cancel the Fifth standard scholarship examination in my article on ‘I without FYE’, appearing in The Sunday Island of Dec. 29.

But, I have not dealt with the stipend normally paid to children below the poverty line when they get through the examination. Perhaps, it was called ‘scholarship examination’ because of this payment. Children whose families were above a specified monthly income did not receive the stipend. Others who passed it had only the advantage of moving into a better school.

Speaking for myself, the stipend made no difference until I was admitted to a hostel and scholarship money was used to maintain it. Until such time the award had got lost in my father’s budget, after a part of it was deducted as contributions to the school, thus heralding a practice that is rampant today. In any case, the payment did not make much difference to me. Judging from the rush to go home for the weekend, conditions at home might have been better than at the hostel for most of us. The stipend really stood me in good stead only after I was relocated to a school to which travelling was expensive and inconvenient.

In any case, poor law was in the embryo when the Father of Free Education formulated his Scheme. His principal aim was to make higher education accessible to the poor. He was perceptive enough though, to realise that, the concession would make no difference to a hungry child. Thus, the stipend was calculated to be an ancillary support. Such provision became superfluous after financial support was provided across the board to every family below the poverty line. After Samurdhi the scholarship became a double payment. Such payment would intensify competition causing jealousy in the environment and tension in the child, avoidance of which appears to be a main objective behind the abolition of the FYE.

Under the proposed Scheme the new exam becomes a tool of admission to the Central School. Poverty alleviation is no longer its problem. What comes under the education sector now is provision for the dropouts left in the feeder schools and enhancement of facilities for the successful. In the matter of providing facilities, all who get into the Central School are on an equal footing after getting in there. Their needs have to be dealt with on the merits of each case. They are lucky that such needs have been personally recognized by the Head of State in making provisions in the 2012 Budget.

In an article, "Helping poor children - ensure delivery on target" published in The Island on November 18, 2012, I made the following remark: "It warmed the cockles of my heart to hear the recent Budget offering nourishment, extra clothing and new shoes to the destitute children of schools in the backwoods".

Observing that the budget provision might not be spent efficiently, unless a new and effective setup was established in the concerned schools with an eagle-eyed manager at the top of it to supervise delivery, I suggested a gender representative panel of two to make a joint recommendation after a confidential individual interview for selecting beneficiaries. "Let the budget provisions be credited to a Welfare Fund in each school. It is likely that well-wishers of that institution, particularly its old pupils who are grateful to their alma mater for the positions they now hold in life, would be happy to contribute to the Fund".

More than a year after the budget provision, the Ministry of Education does not appear to have taken any meaningful action to organise a delivery system that could maximise the bonanza for the benefit of deserving children up to now.

In the meantime, I issued a standing order to my bank to remit a certain sum of money from my monthly pension to be paid to five students in the name of five of my favourite teachers and called for a confidential report on the beneficiaries at the end of the year. The annual report stunned me. Payment had been made to children who had failed to win scholarships but they had received double what the successful ones had got. Only one of those selected had come within the first ten in the class. Shockingly, one of them was the last! None had extracurricular attainments.

In the circumstance I suspended my SO and requested the school management to form a Welfare Fund as recommended above to which I could transfer the remittance. One year later, I still await a response. As a result, by now poor children of my old school have lost sixty thousand rupees that could have gone to supply their acute needs.