Waiting anxiously for an exam that never seems to come
The spectre of the disruption to studies caused by the COVID19 pandemic continues to haunt Sri Lanka’s school students, a full four years after the pandemic struck.
The ordinary level (O/L) and advanced level (A/L) examination schedules have still not normalised, with each batch of students since then facing delays of nearly six months— their futures put on hold.
The 2023 A/L exams were only held in January this year, causing the 2023 O/L exams to be pushed forward to May. No starting date has yet been firmly assigned.
The principal of a rural school that has 420 students explained the difficulties that they undergo to ensure that outstanding batches receive the required, essential education while trying to avoid delaying future batches.
“We have 63 students who are sitting the O/Ls in May,” he said, requesting anonymity. “In the meantime, a new O/L batch (grade 11) is incoming with 59 students. We don’t want to delay the new batch, but our school is poor, so both batches must share the same teachers and the same classroom.”
“All we have managed to do is bring plastic chairs to increase the capacity of the classroom,” he said. “And we have recommended that the teachers take hourly turns teaching each batch.” And throughout the many school breaks, these teachers conducted classes while travelling at their own expense.
The delays are caused primarily by terms not finishing on time—and terms have not finished on time since COVID19, followed by the economic crisis and political crisis. Last year’s third term, for instance, only concluded in February of this year.
Officials also stressed that the Department of Examinations is an independent body despite being under the Ministry of Education. But they were feeling political pressure to postpone exams, as well as getting pushback from some students and parents who wanted more study time.
Separately, the private tuition lobby also plays a role in influencing the setting of examination dates, these officials said, adding that, “No one should be able to interfere in the scheduling of exams, but unfortunately, this is not the reality.”
Students are suffering
Despite the challenges, the government could have avoided such permanent delays had quick and serious action been taken, insisted Joseph Stalin, the convener of the Ceylon Teachers Union. “They didn’t have any serious plan on how to overcome the situation,” he claimed. “They didn’t bother to try and reduce the syllabus during the COVID-19 years like other countries did, yet they talk a lot about large-scale reforms.”
A UNESCO report on COVID-19 for 2020-2021 indicated that 57% of countries that continued high-stakes examinations adjusted the curriculum in an effort to avoid delays. Other countries reduced the content of examinations or changed the method of evaluation. In Sri Lanka, however, the Education Ministry did not take such steps as it wanted to maintain the quality of education, officials said.
The impact of delays on the students is harsh. The Sunday Times learned of multiple cases where teachers were stretched so thin--with two batches of grade 13 and one batch of grade 12, all in school at the same time--that the delayed batch of A/L students stopped attending school as they had few to no classes each day.
One student who sat her A/Ls in January 2024 at the age of 20 said that, by July 2023, her batch had almost entirely stopped attending school even though the syllabus wasn’t complete. “I studied the rest by myself and through tuition classes,” she said, “We basically had six months of study leave.”
Students who relied solely on school education, however, have had their chances of succeeding at the examinations slashed greatly, not to mention the stress of constant uncertainty.
“We don’t have the motivation to do anything till the last moment because we don’t know when the exam will be held,” said a 17-year-old student, who expects to do her O/L in May. She still doesn’t know if her exam will be held as scheduled-or whether it will start in early May or late May.
“I stopped all my extracurricular activities in mid-2023, thinking the O/L would be in December that year, or January this year,” she said. “But it wasn’t held, and I’m losing an entire year. It’s not good for our physical or mental health when we are in suspension like this.”
Delayed higher education
In pursuing a university education or entering the job market, students found themselves delayed yet again. For instance, many who sat delayed A/L examinations missed deadlines to join technical institutes as they were waiting to see if their A/L results were sufficient for university.
“These students are doubly delayed and will have to wait for the next intake and end up losing yet another of their golden years of learning,” said J. Jayalath, the Deputy Director General of the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission, which administers programmes to about 200,000 students each year. There have been occasions where the number of students entering programmes was so low that they, too, were forced to postpone the intake until A/L results were released, he revealed.
Mr. Stalin said that Sri Lankan students are far behind those of other countries and that this badly affects their options in the future.
“It’s very unfair to them,” he stressed. “We have decided that although we will conduct trade union actions to push the government to invest more in education, we will not resort to strikes as that will burden the students.”
Trade union actions have in the past contributed by a few weeks to the overall delays.
Education reforms, including to the curriculum, have been in the pipeline since 2020. So far, little has come to fruition. Officials at the Ministry of Education, who requested not to be named, allege that the lag in implementing change is owing to last-minute additions and amendments.
Grand plans to include artificial intelligence (AI) in the curriculum and to digitalise classrooms are publicly discussed by the President and Ministry. But the full breadth of reforms is not yet available. And given the serious, growing disparities among schools-and the failure even to hold crucial exams on time--it is uncertain how such initiatives will be implemented without getting the basics right.
The Ministry of Education has now published the exam schedule, and Minister Susil Premajayantha has vowed that exams will not be postponed.