Admit all qualified to enter universities – FUTA

July 26, 2012, 12:00 pm , the island

by Dasun Edirisinghe

The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) yesterday requested the government to enroll all students who had qualified to enter universities, according to previous and present Z-score lists.

Addressing a media conference at the National Library Auditorium, former General Secretary of FUTA Dr. Rohan Fernando said that they would be ready to teach a double batch if the government admitted all those students to universities except the Uva Wellassa University.

The Examinations Department had earlier pooled the old and news syllabi in calculating the Z-score, but, later the Supreme Court ordered that the Z-score be calculated separately for the two syllabi, following a petition filed by some teachers’ unions, parents and students.

According to the sub sections six and seven of Section 15 of the University Act, the UGC should  consult the faculty boards, senate and university councils when deciding the number of students to be accommodated in the relevant universities, Dr. Fernando said.

He said that all three bodies included FUTA members and they would arrange for universities to accommodate more students.

"Our members in universities countrywide, except the Uva Wellassa University, would work harder to accommodate more students for the 2012/13 batch," Dr. Fernando, adding that there were no university teachers’ associations in the newly formed Uva Wellassa University.

The senior academic said that the then governments in 1991 and 2000 had decided to enroll double batches and then too university teachers had agreed to go along with those decisions out of their concern for children.

Dr. Fernando said that the government should take a policy decision to admit more students to universities for the next academic year without further delay.

FUTA Vice President Ven. Dambara Amila thera said that the government should allocate more funds to universities to enroll all students who passed the GCE (A/L) examination annually.

"Currently, only high performers could enter universities due to lack of resources, both physical and human," he said.

Ven. Amila said that FUTA had demanded that the government allocate 6 per cent of the GDP to education since 2008 but the government had not responded positively.

"If the government accepted our demand in 2008, it could have enrolled all students who qualified under the previous and present Z-score lists without any difficulty," Ven. Amila thera said.