Sri Lanka needs to focus on building human resource skills and investing in early childhood education, in order to achieve its targets of becoming a competitive, upper-middle income country, and if Sri Lanka is to achieve its ambition of becoming a globally competitive upper- middle income country, a human resource development expert said.
Professor of Human Development at University of Oxford, Edward Melhuish said lack of investments in Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs will greatly affect future education, literacy rate, numerical and social skills, employability and health of the people of this country.
Addressing a forum on ‘Building Brains, Building Futures’ organized by UNICEF in Colombo, Professor Melhuish said Sri Lanka faces a shortage of human resources and also lags behind other middle income countries in terms of early childhood education.
Citing reasons for this, he said Sri Lanka spends extraordinary little of 0.0001 % of GDP on ECE and this is lower than its south Asian neighbors and even lower than some of the poorest sub Saharan African countries.
“Consequently, ECE programs in Sri Lanka are inadequate and regulatory structure is poor. There is no formal curriculum and early learning standards and many centres are lacking adequate resources for teaching and learning.”
He pointed out the importance of enhancing access to ECE programs, especially for poor households through public funded ECE while raising parents’ awareness.
To improve the quality of ECE programs in Sri Lanka, he also stressed the need to implement high quality curricula, develop standards for child outcomes and to introduce minimum standards for Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres.
In addition, Prof. Melhuish noted that it is important to ensure teachers receive adequate pre-service and in service professional development. In a bid to improve sector coordination and governance, he said, it is also imperative to clarify regulatory structures and quality assurance framework and to maintain data on ECD.
Building Brains, Building Futures, follows a series of sectoral consultations on health, education and child protection, that were held to identify new and additional investment priorities and budget asks for ECD that the Government can make through its National Budget for 2019.
The High-Level Meeting was organized by the Department of National Planning and supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in partnership with Ministry of Finance and Mass Media, Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine, Ministry of Women and Child Affairs, The Parliamentary Caucus for Children and World Bank.
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