Ditching Grade 5 test is premature, experts warn

The government’s proposal to scrap the Grade 5 scholarship exam has support but many educationists and researchers warned the country was not yet ready for the move.

They say with no proper mechanism to substitute for the exams, doing away with the test will only deprive rural students of a chance to enter popular urban schools.

It is also argued the only opportunity a rural student has of gaining entry into the national schools system is through the Grade 5 scholarship exam.

Experts say it is beyond dispute that the urban elite have an edge over the rural poor due to clauses in Grade 1 admission rules such as proximity of the student’s home to the school, a parent being an old boy/girl of the school and siblings already attending the school.

Educationists also argue the Grade 5 scholarship exam does not measure a child’s ability to do well in future years. Research has shown that most high performers from the rural sector score poorly in later years, in their Ordinary and Advanced Level exams.

Professor Kirthi Tennakone of the National Institute of Fundamental Studies said the education system is killing the ability of students to think independently and creatively.

The mindset to excel in exams only created a “routine workforce”, he said: the system ended up producing doctors, engineers and architects who could manage only routine work and no remarkable achievements were made in their lifetime.

“There is no innovation or new findings,” Prof. Tennakone said.

This, he attributes to the fact that children are being pushed into excessive studies at their developmental stage instead of taking part in an array of activities that would develop their creative skills.

Children should indulge in play, imagination, enjoyment, reading beyond an exam agenda, and improvise toys – activities that would tune a young mind and foster curiosity and creativity, turning them into scientific discoverers, inventors and writers.

Institute of Policy Studies Senior Research Officer, Ashani Abayasekera, who has carried out extensive research on this subject, said the exams should be voluntary.

She said, in the current compulsory system, all Grade 5 children had to sit for an exam in which urban schoolchildren came out on top because they had better school facilities.

No matter how well children prepared for the exam, only a fifth of them obtained admission to popular urban schools. This is because of the system in place where children who entered popular schools in Grade 1 remain at those schools irrespective of their performance at the Grade 5 scholarship exam.

One way of addressing this issue, Ms. Abayasekera said, was to shift the exam to Grade 7 or Grade 8, by which time the child is more mature and in a better mental frame to handle the stress of a scholarship exam.

Another suggestion is that only children seeking admission to popular schools sit for the exam. In this way, children whose parents have no aspirations to send their offspring to popular national schools can relax and enjoy their childhood, free of stress.

National Education Commission (NEC) Policy Vice-Chairman Dr. G.B. Gunewardena agrees that a written exam at the age of 10 does not help evaluate a child’s ability. It is important, he said, that the teaching and learning process be evaluated. “Educationists have been proposing for change in the system for a long time,” he said.

The NEC is scheduled to discuss this matter at its next monthly meeting on April 4 and, following this, hold a seminar for ministry representatives, psychiatrists and educationists. The Grade 5 scholarship exams were initiated in the 1940s by the father of free education, Dr. C.W.W. Kannangara, for the benefit of the rural community.

Problems with the scheme have arisen over the past 15 years with the deterioration of education in the central schools created for the benefit of rural folk.

“There is a huge disparity in the school system pushing parents to look for good schools in the urban areas,” Dr. Gunewardena said.

He says that to create a level playing field the inequalities that exist among the 10,162 schools in the country should be removed.

“Around 3,000 schools do not have even basic facilities,” he said. “Some have swimming pools but others don’t even have fundamental sanitary facilities including drinking water and toilets."

The policy of making the nearest school the best school and the cluster school system are good but there is a long way to go, he added.

Dr. Sujatha Gamage, educationist and senior research officer at the thinktank LIRNEasia, said when urban children in popular schools are allowed to sit exams alongside children from rural underprivileged schools it defeats the purpose of the exam.

Statistics from the 2016 Grade 5 examination showed that 13.7 per cent of candidates from families of higher income levels scored above the cut-off mark compared to 5.8 per cent from the lower income families.

She said there was also geographical disparity, with students in the Central and North-Central provinces performing worse than children from other provinces.

University of Peradeniya Professor of Chemistry Vijay Kumar said to build up quality schools, teachers should be given incentives in the form of housing and other perks. Inspectors should be deployed as in the olden days to ensure that the syllabus was taught.

Dr. Kumar also asks for mechanisms to prevent teacher absenteeism and to curb the growth of the tuition mafia.