High failure rate in Sri Lankan GCE O Level examination

About half (47% or 129,062) of the 272,000 school students who sat GCE O/L examination in 2009 will not be able to gain entry to the Advanced Level classes, and without OL certificate, they may not even be able to get a simple job.  The 2009 results were poorer than the previous year (2008), when 55% qualified to do their ALs.

The pass percentages of core subjects such as Mathematics, Science and English language are relatively low, but the percentage of passes in some  subjects like Sinhala  is high,English language only 28% passed  in 2009.

• Mathematics – only 51% have passed. This is the same as in 2008.
• Science – only 45%, have passed. This is a further drop from 2008 which recorded 47% .
• Sinhala (a first language or mother tongue) — 80% have passed
• Tamil (a first language or mother tongue) – 75% have passed.

“It is a kind of a crisis in the education system.  There should be more focus on O/L failures”, Commissioner General of Examinations, Anura Edirisinghe said to National Newspaper “Sunday Observer”.

Some possible causes for this educational crisis:

Sri Lankan O/L syllabuses are both wide and deep. Width of the present curriculum prepared by National  Institute of Education is acceptable as the earlier curriculum was very narrow and did not cover even the basic concepts in each subject. The real problem is with the depth of the curriculum and the depth of the questions at GCE O/L examination. For example many questions in O/L Science paper are at the level of Advanced Level.

NIE publishes curriculum, text books and Teacher’s Guides.  Curriculum and well written text books would definitely increase the level of teaching and learning. But the way the teachers teach can differ and therefore creativity of individual teachers can be lost, when they try to restrict the fashion of teaching as indicated in TG’s.

Education authorities say that they have adopted a skill based system. This type of system should rely on the mode of teaching. However when the contents that need to be covered are so deep, as in the case of Science, how can teachers do skill based system. One student told me that the teacher advised them to prepare models of atoms using different types of seeds.  Three dimensional model of atoms cannot be understood by this type of 2D models and its is not a skill that makes a student more capable, or confident, but these activates eat there valuable time in preparing for studies.

Also skill based system cannot be checked by a traditional examination based system. If the work load is less in O/L then students have more free time, where they can be directed to Sports, Societies and Social work which will build up their skills, character building and making them confident, capable, healthy, presentable individuals.

For those who fail the examination, it is essential to develop vocational training courses to train them so that they can get well paid jobs in foreign countries, as there is a big demand for such trained people.

Post  your ideas on possible causes and how to solve this educational issue in Sri Lanka:

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