Ambitious parents, competing teachers drive students over the edge

A 10-year- old boy was branded with a heated iron rod by his father (38) when he failed in the Grade 5 Scholarship exam.

The incident took place in a tea estate in Bogawanthalawa. Following complaints by the teachers of the boy’s school, the father was arrested and remanded till October 15.

In a separate incident in Moneragala, another boy (10) was threatened and chased from home, when he failed to secure marks at the Scholarship exam, according to his parents’ expectations. The boy was later taken back home and the police have assured him security.

Meanwhile, a mother, who’s a teacher in a private school, had locked her 10-year- old daughter in a kennel for two hours, when she too failed to score the required marks in the exam. The incident is reported from Kiribathgoda.

The police were tipped off of the incident, when the victim’s friends informed their parents, after the girl confided in them of her ordeal. The mother has thus punished the girl claiming that she couldn’t face the school that she is presently teaching in.

“The Scholarship exam is not functioning the way it should. The whole purpose of the exam was to help the needy, but now it has become a competitive and stressful event to parents, teachers and mainly the children,” said Open University Educationist, Dr. Shironika Karunanayake.

She said that parents make their children ready for this exam as early as Grade 1, where children are burdened with extra classes. “The deviation from its main purpose has left our children stressful and mentally affected, while their childhood is snatched away from them unfairly,” she said.

Manel Manamperi (54) has been tutoring candidates for the Grade 5 Scholarship exam for 30 years. Presently based in Maharagama, Ms. Manamperi said that the competitive nature of the exam has made most students vulnerable to failure. “Students doing extremely well in the class, fail the exam. This is because of the stress and fear that parents impose on them. I believe that students can do better if they are not forced to excel one another,” she said.

According to Ms. Manamperi, the competition in the exam has increased immensely during the past few years. “This is mainly because most parents intend enrolling their students into a reputed school. However, sadly, during my years of teaching, I have seen parents of students already in good schools, also obsessed over scoring well in this exam.”

Upulini Jayawardena, a Visakha Vidyalaya teacher conducting private tuition classes for the Scholarship exam, said that, passing the Grade 5 exam doesn’t ensure passing the Ordinary or Advance Level exams, which are more important.

Ms. Jayawardena said that most rural parents aspire to enroll their children into a reputed school in the city. “Through my experience I have seen that this has not helped the students. They need to grow under the love and affection of their parents. It is then that the child will grow healthy both mentally and physically,” she said.

Thirty- six-year old Sulochana Alwis’s said that the last few months have been stressful to the whole family because her daughter was a candidate at the recent exam. “Children are being pushed by parents as well as teachers. The competition among Grade 5 teachers themselves has a major impact on our children. Sometimes they are ridiculed in class when they get an answer wrong,” she said.

Ms. Alwis said that sometimes even if the parents are not interested in pushing their child to get good marks, teachers stress them to do so.

Central College Anuradhapura, Principal M.H. Abeykoon said that, even though there is an argument that this examination is not healthy for the students, no one has come up with an alternative for it.

“We take only those who have passed the examination. Last year, the cutoff mark was 163, while this year it would be even more. Parents want their children to do well in the exam because they want their children to get into a reputed school, or the students who are coming from low income families to get a scholarship. But still no one has come up with an alternative to passing this exam,” he said.

- Aanya Wipulasena