ABDF

The Government of Sri Lanka has released the results of the national 5th Grade Scholarship Exam. Our efforts to increase the results at the school in Navatkadu, which seemed so successful last year, have yielded a decidedly mixed result in 2011. While there were no losses when compared to last year, 2011 has not been the resounding success we had hoped. The following are my thoughts on what is going on, and what we have decided to do about it.

Last year we threw together this project, and winged our way through it in a very short time. The kids only had two months to absorb a lot of material, and the pressure on them was accordingly increased, and in a way they are not normally accustomed. However, as you can see here, the results were rather impressive, with a record year in terms of 100+ point scorers. Of course there was the ominous 33% of very low scorers to worry about as well.

This year we repeated last years’ project, but rather than cramming everything into two months we decided to spread it out over four. The theory was that the slower pace would relieve some of the pressure on the kids (these are 5th graders, after all), and allow them the time to digest the materials they were given, as well as allow for more time to address the weaknesses exposed by the test papers we were giving them.

We eagerly awaited the results, expecting to see a rise in scoring. The results were a bit underwhelming. While there was nothing particularly bad about the results, there was no up-tick in scores to be seen. Statistically speaking, the percentages of in the top score ranges were pretty much flat, despite the extra time, energy, and money invested.

None of the kids got the scholarship money; the goal this year was 144 points, and our top scorer 127.

The bright spot is that the very bottom rung of kids, those who scored 20 points or less, fell dramatically from 33% to 3%. In an opposite trend, the percentages in what I call the “low-middle” score ranges increased significantly. I think this indicates the back side of the “bubble” of not-educated kids we saw last year.

I have been hearing, anecdotally, from teachers at other schools in the area. It sounds like nearby schools are getting comparable results, or I should say, are getting results ALMOST as good as ours – and they don’t have any sort of after school programs. In fact one boy at the school in Vavunatheevu, four kilometers down the road, did score above 144 points, again, without the help of an after-school program such as ours.

The conclusion is unavoidable: this particular method does not significantly help the kids achieve higher test results. While our program undoubtedly has had some positive impact, it’s hard to argue that the impact is significant, as evidenced both by the flat test scores, as well as the increasing accomplishments of nearby schools. Whatever the impact may be, it doesn’t justify the expenditure of times and resources.

So we have decided not to fund this project in the future. We are not abandoning the school or anything like that; but we have told the school administration that if they want continued support, particularly with the elementary school kids, that they will have to come up with a different sort of program.

Our suggestion is that we all pull back from worrying about the exam and instead focus on more basic educational issues, such as literacy and basic math. For example, reading and writing Tamil is taught in the First Grade for an hour and a half each day. There are two First Grade classes, yet there is only one First Grade teacher, and the two classes have 67 and 63 children, respectively. Aside from the fact that it’s physically impossible for the teacher to teach two separate classes at the same time, there is the problem of trying to teach 67 restless First Graders to read and write for an hour and a half. With a class of that size there is no way any student can receive personal attention. Given this and other problems at the school, my suggestion to Principle Golapillai and the staff was to re-focus and concentrating on the basics.

As an aside, I was curious why so many kids did not take the test. I rounded up a couple local friends and, without notice and unaccompanied by anyone from the school, hunted down the families of all eleven kids to ask their parents why. Let me tell you: it was incredibly depressing.

Out of the eleven, one parent reported that his child was very sick the day of the test, and every instinct told me that he (the Dad) was telling the truth. His body language indicated the truth, and he did not wear that stupid “you caught me” grin that all the other parents sported. My two local friends came to the same conclusion.

The remaining ten families showed a blatant apathy towards their kids’ education. The parents simply don’t care. Of the ten, two were honest about their neglect: one parent said she has given up on her son, who refuses to go to school and runs away when sent there, and the other (also a mom) merely shrugged and said she had no reason why her daughter didn’t go to the class or take the exam. Well, its neglect, but at least they were honest.

The remaining eight just grinned and told us a series of excuses/lies. One woman said her daughter was acting badly, and so that day the family took her to kovil (Hindu temple) to perform a special puja (service) to drive out whatever bad spirit was causing the behavior. I didn’t ask her why she couldn’t go to kovil the day before or after the exam. Another woman said her infant was sick and she had to go to Batticaloa Hospital. Batticaloa is about 12 kilometers away, and the house had a large extended family, but still, for whatever reason the mother couldn’t/wouldn’t leave her daughter behind so she could take the test. All in all, it was a litany of lies and excuses to justify the neglect of their kids’ educations. For these ten families, at least, it was a case of leading a horse to water.

Although I found the experience depressing, it was really useful to see where these kids come from. Most of them live in mud-walled one-room houses with thatched roofs on tiny plots of bare land off from the main dirt road. All of the families were large, with lots of brother and sisters. In more than half the husband/father was gone; some were working in the Middle East, but many either had disappeared or were killed during the war. All of them were the victims of deep poverty; for example, I noticed that only two had toilets on their properties and none of them had wells for water.

All of the families have been disposed multiple times, first by war, then by the floods earlier this year. All of them experienced severe atrocities during the war, from both sides of the conflict.

So you have a student base living in extreme poverty, with one or both parents either missing or frequently gone from home for extended periods of time. You have large families eking a living from rice farming on small plots of land, or working as hired farm hands on other people’s land. There is a widespread sense of instability and anxiety over the future. While most people can read and write and have some basic math skills (this is according to the teachers at the school) there is little value put in education, particularly when the kids are more useful in the house or on the farm, and the expectation is that they will remain there all their lives. True, there are some parents who want their kids to claw their way out of this situation, but the sense I get from visiting families, and talking with the kids and teachers at the school, is that the majority attitude is apathetic at best. That’s a hard frame of mind to change and makes the job of teaching all the more difficult and frustrating. It’s no wonder that many teachers stop caring and just put in their time until retirement. It’s a vicious cycle.

I’m not sure what ABDF can do about this situation, one that is replicated in all the schools in the former LTTE area. We have neither the clout nor the resources to change cultural attitudes. Nor am I, or any other member of ABDF, an expert in education. I also know that we have the exact same problems, attitude-wise, in the United States, and if the problem can’t be solved in America, with all it’s resources and know-how, how can it be changed in impoverished, oppressive, repressive, Sri Lanka?

That said, we will continue to look for, and try, new ideas on how to help these kids. The whole thing is an experiment, and only by trying will we know what works and what doesn’t. And so, despite the suspension of this project, we must remain optimistic that we can help in the long run.

The data and analysis can be found here.