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Don’t import teachers; Recruit Tamil-speaking unemployed graduates

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13 December 2017 12:09 am - 1     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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During the height of the war, the Tamil medium schools in the Central Province were filled with teachers from Jaffna or rather the Northern Province.   The Northern Tamil teachers dropped their pride, set aside the Sri Lankan Tamil-Indian Tamil divisions and egos and humbly helped the children of the brethren in the Central hills.

Besides, a substantial number of war-fleeing civilians of Northern Origin settled in Nuwara Eliya with many getting married to locals. They went on to form a burgeoning community of Northern origin in Nuwara Eliya and it was thanks to this vote base that MPs like Sri Ranga from Vavuniya won a parliamentary seat from Nuwara Eliya.   

The presence of large number of Northern teachers who were traditionally known for their skills in education ensured that most local students studied subjects like Math and Science from them. Never had the quality of education in the Tamil medium schools in the Central Province been that good as during the war. While the war raged in the North the future of the students in the central hillslooked bright and positive.   

However, everything changed with the war coming to an end in May 2009. While the sun shone on the rest of the country with the dawn of peace unfortunately it crippled the education of these hapless Tamil medium students in the Central Province.   

The Northern teachers went back to North creating a massive number of teacher vacancies. Their earlier Northern pride surfaced. In the post-war period nobody from the North was willing to teach in the Central hills again. The Tamil brethren of Indian origin left completely neglected. The children of Northern Tamils in Nuwara Eliya including those with mixed Jaffna-Indian parentage did not want their children to teach or be employed in Nuwara Eliya. Thanks to the low cut-off marks in the district a large number of students from this community got selected to universities and they headed to Jaffna for their higher studies never to return.   

Meanwhile, Sinhala teachers with Tamil proficiency offered to fill part of the vacancies in the province However that was just a fragment of the demand. Besides, most of these teachers too were trained for primary classes. After all learning Tamil, a language with completely different phonetics and alphabet, is still difficult to many Sinhalese.   Today thousands of Tamil medium teacher slots for ordinary level and advanced level Math and Science subjects remain vacant dealing a big blow to the higher education of the students in the hills.   

On the other hand there’s an ongoing protest by the unemployed graduates in the Northern and Eastern provinces, numbering in thousands, demanding jobs.Other than these there are unemployed Tamil graduates in the rest of the country as well.If the government has any sense it should recruit these Tamil speaking unemployed graduates and make it mandatory for them to work in the Central province at least a few years.   

It is nothing but preposterous to import Indian teachers who are trained in completely different syllabi to teach our students while our own graduates remain jobless.   While C.W.W. Kannangara introduced free education policy in 1945, it was not until 1977 under the J.R. Jayewardene regime that the Tamil medium students in the Central hills were able to reap its benefits. Only a handful of missionary schools and the poor-quality estate schools made up for the education until then.   

With the introduction of government schools the number of students in formal education rose by leaps and bounds in the region. The war that broke out in 1983 came as a blessing in disguise to them with Northern teachers opting to teach them.   

Meanwhile from time to time successive governments gave political appointments to school leavers in this region as teachers. Even a few months ago a batch of about 3,000 such teachers joined schools. However as they are without training most of these teachers end up in primary classes while some others teach religion and Tamil language to senior students. The political appointments had resulted in a surplus of teachers for primary classes and also for subjects like religion and language for senior classes.   

There is an urgent need to train these political appointees in the Colleges of Education so that they too get qualified to teach subjects like Math and Science at least till ordinary level. The teachers who have already passed out from the Colleges and employed in schools should be encouraged to get their degrees with proper training from Sri Pada National College of Education in Hatton so that they could teach Math and Science subjects to O/L and A/L students.   


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  Comments - 1

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  • Realtruth Wednesday, 13 December 2017 10:11 AM

    Useless talking all parana past katha,if anybody talk about getting teachers from other countries to teach in Up Country,then something somewhere went wrong.For this too please don't appoint a committee and waste the time. Fill the vacancies with local teachers.


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