Students not in attendance: Staggering dropout rate after grade five

Recent Education Ministry performance report shows fifty thousand students drop out of national schools after grade five

A fifty thousand student dropout rate exists between grade five and grade 11 within national s c h o o l s, a re c e n t Education Ministry performance report has revealed.

The 2019 performance report of the Education Ministry presented a statistical analysis of students’ academic performance at the country’s three public examination thresholds – the Grade Five scholarship exam, the G.C.E. Ordinary Level ( O/ L) Examination and the G. C. E. Advanced Level (A/L) Examination.

The perfo r mance report revealed a marked drop in the number of students that take part in the O/ L Examinations over the past few years, when compared to the Grade Five Scholarship Examinations. In 2014, 350,191 students participated in the scholarship examinations. A marked drop was noticed in the same batch’s participation in the 2019 O/ L Examinations. With only 305,427 students participating in the 2019 O/ L examinations, approximately forty five thousand students were unaccounted for within the system.

Former Education Ministry Secretary N.H.M. Chitrananda said the Ministry had not conducted research into the reason behind the drop.

A pattern seemed to exist in the dropout rates between scholarship examination grades and O/L examinations grades as a dropout rate of 54,433 students was also noticed in the batch of 2018.

Dropouts between the O/L examinations and A/L examinations were common due to the trend of leaving for higher studies after the O/L examinations. No sound reasoning was presented to explain the fifty thousand students that disappeared from the system between grade five and grade 11.

2017, was the year with the highest participation rate for the grade five scholarship examinations, and 350,462 students sat for these exams. During the 2015-2019 period, average examination candidates stood at 427,566 students per year. Out of the 332,179 students that sat for the exams during this time period, 78.10 per cent students passed the examinations with more than 70 marks. Pass rates have remained consistent between 69-79 percent.Tharushi Weerasinghe