Small schools and bigger picture

Wednesday 7th July, 2021

The government has decided to reopen the state-run schools on a staggered basis after inoculating all teachers and school workers against Covid-19. The schools with fewer than 100 students each on roll will be reopened first, and they number 2,962, the Education Ministry has said. Teachers’ trade unions inform us that there are 10,165 government schools in the country, and of them 373 are the so-called national schools under the government; the others are under the Provincial Councils. Worryingly, 1,468 schools have fewer than 50 students each.

The manner in which the government is planning to reopen schools has attracted criticism from some quarters, but we believe that it was a wise decision on the part of the education authorities to refrain from biting off more than it could chew. The progress of the school reopening programme should be monitored carefully, flaws therein rectified and remedial measures adopted before schools with large numbers of students on roll are allowed to recommence their academic activities. This will help prevent the formation of Covid-19 infection clusters in schools. The police and the health authorities will have to keep a watchful eye on the so-called school vehicles, whose operators obviously have no concern for students’ convenience or health. These contraptions with students shoehorned into every conceivable space lack proper ventilation and could, therefore, be hotbeds of viral infections.

The task of reopening schools could be far more formidable than it looks, given its complexity. There are two quondam Vice Chancellors in charge of the education sector—Education Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris and Secretary to the Education Ministry Prof. Kapila Perera. We hope they will succeed in their endeavour.

Meanwhile, the above-mentioned statistics are really disconcerting. The small schools that do not have more than 100 students on roll cater to the marginalised sections of society, and many of them face the prospect of closure. During the last decade alone, about 300 such schools have been closed down. The political authority does not want to keep the schools with only several dozens of students each open. These seats of learning are being closed under what has come to be known as the ‘school rationalisation programme’, we are told; the education authorities inform us that the idea is to make the best use of the scarce resources allocated for school education. This newspaper has, over the years, carried quite a few pictures of abandoned school buildings overgrown with tall, rank weeds. One hopes and prays that the same fate will not befall the small schools to be reopened soon.

The geographic proximity of schools to poor communities is of crucial import where the education of the underprivileged children is concerned. Trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty and semiliteracy, these children tend to stay away from the schools located far away from their homes, thereby causing the school drop-out rate to increase significantly. The need to keep the small schools open, regardless of the number of students on roll, and develop them cannot be overemphasised.

School closures are due to several factors. Public transport has improved relatively over the decades and rural students can now travel to urban and suburban schools with better facilities, and many poor students drop out before completing primary education, thereby bringing down the number of pupils in underprivileged schools drastically.

The closure of small schools is also due to what is known as the exit phenomenon; when the influential sections of society leave a state institution/service, the latter deteriorates because only the voiceless people become dependent on them. The state-owned bus and train services serve as examples. This is why we keep arguing in this space that the people’s representatives, especially the MPs, must be made to use public transport as far as possible, seek treatment at government hospitals and send their children to the schools in their electorates so that there will be pressure on the governments they represent to improve those institutions and services. Countering the ill-effects of the exit phenomenon is half the battle in improving the lives of the underprivileged people and their children.

The State should seriously consider providing the students in the underprivileged schools with midday meals besides free textbooks and free uniforms so that their nutritional and educational needs could be taken care of simultaneously. This, we believe, should be a main prong of the government’s poverty alleviation strategy. Education is the most potent antidote to poverty, as is public knowledge. The State is duty-bound to ensure the right of every child to access a full cycle of, at least, basic education. Developing the small schools on the verge of closure and attracting more students thereto will be the first step towards achieving this noble goal.