Z score has taken an unimaginable mental toll on August 2011 and August 2012, ‘A’ level students and their parents and families

That is at least 500,000 students and at least 1 million parents. It is not a simple issue. All these people and future A level students will have concerns about the reliability, credibility and dependability of this method of apportioning a number, which will be used in District cut offs for entry into University in the State System in Sri Lanka. Due to this loss of faith, there appears to be no other option but to the scrap system completely and come up with a different and hopefully more sensible and understandable basis of University Entry. There is just NO other choice.

To add to these woes, the A level exams currently being conducted Islandwide have brought into focus, how fraught with errors they are and further erodes the faith the people have in the Sri Lanka A levels. Add to that the time from O levels to University entrance is now 4 years at least, whereas through the international system with the British GCSE and A levels it is only 2 which means that with international 3 year degrees, International school based kids can graduate at least 3 years ahead of Sri Lankan School’s University kids. So paying Rs 2 to 3 Million to get a head start of 3 years in life seems a cheap price to pay if you got the dough. You can then get 3 years overseas experience and recoup the costs by the time the Sri Lankan student graduates to find that there are no jobs available to him, except the Rs10,000 month stipend the Rajapakse Govt. is cheating graduates with to go to the District Secretariat offices to sign on once a week, as even these offices do not have a place for these so called temporary hired to sit.

This all begs the question of our shortchanging and in short fooling our students in the state education system dashing all their hopes and aspirations because we have not been able to organize a simple set of rules to ensure that youth have expectations that can be fulfilled.

It is important that there is immediate action taken to correct the situation before it gets worse. The breakdown of the state education system, is tantamount to the govt. abrogating its basic responsibilities towards the youth of Sri Lanka. The fact that the citizens of Sri Lanka fail to understand what is happening under their very noses is indicative of the ignorance of our people about what it important. On the one hand the parents sacrifice everything to give their children a good education, but they fail to realize that all that sacrifice is in vain, as the products of the state educations system fail miserably in their ability to gain employment and waste an inordinate amount of time of their youth in farting around, and not being productive, without them, the students, realizing this very essence.