Achieving Vision 2025 will require investment in Sri Lanka’s greatest resource – its young
In September this year the Government of Sri Lanka launched ‘Vision 2025: A Country Enriched’, an ambitious blueprint for Sri Lanka’s sustainable development, and the achievement of a ‘stable, peaceful, reconciled and prosperous Sri Lanka, for all the people of our country’. As the Representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Sri Lanka, and as an individual who cares deeply about the future of this nation and its young, I applaud this bold vision. A stable and prosperous Sri Lanka, achieving its full potential, will benefit all, will create opportunities and will bring real benefits to children and young people in this and future generations.
But it is also vital to note that children must not be seen as the purely passive beneficiaries of an enriched Sri Lanka. On the contrary, children and young people will themselves be the key drivers towards a peaceful and prosperous nation. And critically, it will be their actions, as they grow and enter adulthood that will sustain Sri Lanka’s sustainable development. We must therefore ensure that, above and beyond the invest- ments noted in Vision 2025, Sri Lanka makes it most important investment of all – an investment in its young people.
Vision 2025 highlights a number of areas of focus, but undoubtedly a key focus is economic growth and transformation. In a region of competitive economies and large populations, Sri Lanka’s drive towards ‘a knowledge-based economy, which will be driven by our intellectual capabilities’ is clear sighted. Yet to build a knowledge based economy we must ensure that all Sri Lankan’s have the opportunity to operate at their full intellectual capacity. Waiting until later life to build this capacity is simply too late. Rather we must start building the intellectual and cognitive capacities of all from the very earliest moment. Health and education are therefore fundamental.
Between the ages of zero to five years, the human brain grows rapidly, and its essential architecture is established. We now have the scientific evidence to show that key experiences during this window of ‘ early childhood development’ including good nutrition, protection from violence and abuse, and having love and nurturing care from parents, have a profound impact on a child’s ability to not only to survive, but to learn and grow. Importantly, these impacts last a lifetime and shape the educational success, health and productivity of individuals. But beyond individuals, they have real repercussions for whole economies, including by significantly influencing the public demand and expenditure on welfare, healthcare and other social safety nets. Investing in policies that maximise a child’s development and build their intellectual capabilities will be the fundamental driver of Sri Lanka’s knowledge economy. This investment in every child is not only critical, it is the most cost effective way to build this country's human capital, and it has an impressive return on investment. We must do this now.
Closely linked to the importance of investing in early childhood development is the need to ensure that when children leave school, they have the best possible chance to succeed – both for themselves, and for the development of Sri Lanka. To do this we must ensure a high quality of education. Vision 2025 notes that ‘ education and skills development are currently inadequate to sustain growth through knowledge-based, competitive economic activities’. Whilst educational quality of is course dependent on many interlinked issues, undoubtedly the highly competitive Sri Lankan education system, which encourages teach- ers to ‘teach to the test’ rather than focusing on deeper learning with activities and play, is a factor. When this is combined with a tendency for students who are ‘lagging behind’ to receive limited learning support and therefore to attain less, we can see that many children are leaving education without the full skills a progressing Sri Lanka will need.
For Sri Lanka’s education system to produce the young people we need to drive economic development, the system must facilitate the acquisition of the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required to become successful individuals, productive members of the labour force and responsible citizens. It must also, equally prepare our girls and young women, who should have the opportunity to fully participate in Sri Lanka’s job market.
Further, in a future in which digital literacy will be fundamental, Vision 2025’s aspiration to ‘move towards a digitally empowered economy’ will require ICT skills to be imparted to and explored by the young generation through an enhanced education system. Yet beyond this we should look at how ICT platforms to be utilised as an informal opinion sharing and interaction platform for young people’s voice and ideas to be heard, especially in relation to peace building.
Yet underpinning all of this is the need to protect our young from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation which is scientifically proven to permanently affect the developing brain of a child and hamper their ability to learn and to develop healthily. With the estimated ‘cost’ of violence against children translating into an annual loss of about 2% of GDP per year (approx. $1.6billion for Sri Lanka), not addressing violence has the potential to undo many of the gains the country is striving for.
The Sri Lanka of 2025 and beyond will be governed by future generations. And we must give them, and this country, the best possible chance to succeed in a rapidly changing and highly competitive world. By investing in children from the very beginning of their lives, and continuing that investment throughout their growth, including in school, we can ensure that the vision to ‘make Sri Lanka a rich country by 2025’ is achieved.
But beyond Sri Lanka’s economic wealth, through smart investments in its young, we can ensure that Sri Lanka is rich in its most important and precious resource – its human capital. Because ultimately it is Sri Lanka’s young that will drive and sustain this nation’s development beyond 2025.
(The writer is the UNICEF Representative in Sri Lanka.)