Recent General Education Policy Reforms and their impact on LIS education

This paper briefly irltroduces the general education systerrl of Sri Lanka and the recent problenls encountered with regard to the quality of education. With the objective of eradicating these problems, Ger~eral Education Policy Reforms were brought in by the r n ~ d 19913s. T t i e s ~ pplicy reforms are analysed in the paper together. r;i~ith two major !r\rorld Bank funded projects which introduced radical changes to the general education system by implemlenting the reconlrnended policy reforms. A special eniplasi is is laid on the unprecedented library developrr~ent activities resulted froni the policy r e f r ~ r n ~ s and fir~afly the impacts of these General Education Policy Reforms and related activities on Library and Information Science education of Sri Lanka is discussed.

Sri Lankan government schools are classified into 4 types: 0 Type I A B schools with classes up to grade 13 including A' Level Science Stream; Type 1 C schools with classes up to grade 13 but without A' Level science stream; Type 2 schools with classes up to grade 11 and Type 3 schools with classes up to grade 5. (Ministry of Education 2005).
Eradication of illiteracy is a key policy of the Constitution of Sri Lanka and successive governments since Independence have made contributions to. make this a reality. Yet there has been a sharp decline in the standards and quality of education at all levels. Several major related issues have been identified; A mismatch between skills provided by the education system and labour market requirements. A reduction in the quality of education due to the deficiencies in curricula, types of teaching methods, etc. A reduction in the quality of the teaching strength, particularly due to lack of proper training and the ad hoc recruitment of teachers irrespective of basic requirements. Widespread regional disparities in educational facilities. Poor quality educational infrastructure in rural areas. Shortage of teaching personnel in rural areas, particularly for science, mathematics and English. Difficulties in access to quality primary and secondary education in rural areas exerting more pressure on urban poputar schools. Continuous inadequate resource allocation to the education sector. Insufficient resources available to improve supportive facilities required to raise the quality of education, due to the high wages cost on the overall expenditure on education. A lack of abilities to monitor performances and to institute a well-designed legal framework for international schools. (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 1998) 2 Education policy reforms Many attempts have been in past to reform the general educations system but one of the shortcomings was the ad hoc introduction of changes without a proper study of the situation. In 1991, a National Education Commission was constituted to advise the government on overall education policy covering all aspects of education. The Commission performed detailed studies on a variety of aspects of education and produced a series of documents; Final report of the Commission -1992 An action oriented strategy towards a national education policy -1995 National policy on general education -1997 National policy on university education -1 996 National policy on technical and vocational education -1996 The National Education Commission identified a set of Overall National Goals and also prepared a list of Educationally Relevant Goals, which are derivatives of these overall national goals. It also identified a set of basic competencies, which are essential for the attainment of educationally relevant goals.  (NEC 1995) "An action oriented strategy towards a national education policy" (NEC 1995) presented the following five significant policy areas, which fall within the general education, which cover the school education system from primary to senior secondary level and the National Policy on General Education (NEC 1997) presented the recon~mendations; Extending educational opportunities Improving the quality of education Developing practical and technical skills Education and training of teachers Management of resource provision.
When this document was submitted to the President in 1996, a Presidential Task Force was appointed to implement the policy recommendations, and 1997 was declared as the 'Year of Education Reforms". While the "Action oriented strategy towards a national education policy" dealt with the general education of the country, similar documents were prepared for university education and technical and vocational education by two other groups of experts and similar task forces were appointed for the implementation of these recommendations.
The reform proposals presented strong arguments for a major shift in the educational goats and practices and a far-reaching and harmonized approach to change. The principal elements of this shift are "self realization, lifelong learning with emphasis on learning to learn, inculcating humanistic values and emphasis on stimulating the balanced mental and physical growth of the individual." (NEC 1997, p.3)

World Bank projects in support of policy Implementations
In order to implement the policy recommendations the government of Sri Lanka sought aid from foreign missions and the World Bank agreed to provide credit under two major projects; General Education Project first and second phases ((GEPI and GEP2) and the Teacher Education and Teacher Deployment (TETD) Project.
Libraries component of GEP2 and Upgrading Teacher Education programmes of TETD are two significant initiatives, which introduced a radical change to the libraries and library education of Sri Lanka. These two components will be discussed in detail in the following sections.

Second General Education Project (GEP2)
This project started in 1997 and ended in December 2005. Total project value is US$ million 70. The objectives of the GEP2 were to improve the quality, access, management and financing of existing education programmes, and to increase education's responsiveness to economic needs and to reducing poverty. There are nine components of this project; 1. Curriculum development component, to prepare a strategy to implement a sequential and cyclical curriculum in all subjects for grades 1-9, to improve curriculum management and to train teachers; 2. TextbooksleducationaI publications component, to improve textbook content and physical conditions, to allow re-use and a multiple textbook option, to increase private sector printing, and to continue private sector delivery ; 3. School facilities rationalization component, to increase equitable and cost-effective allocation of educational facilities and libraries; 4. Quality inputs component, to supply educational materials and equipment to match the curriculum for elementary and junior high schools; 5. Libraries component, to provide books, equipment, furniture, and training for staff in library management; 6. Education management and planning component, to upgrade planning capacity and to develop national, provincial, and institutional p\arls, to strengt\tet-t yua\ity assurance and financing mechanisms, and to define policies and lines of authorities; 7. Education financing component, to implement a formula to improve resource allocation, trains staff, and to allocate management tools and equipment; 8. Impact analysis studies; and 9. Project coordination (World Bank 1997) According to a survey carried out by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in 1995, out of 81 79 government schools (excluding schools in North-East Province), 70% did not have school libraries. Several other significant issues also were identified by this survey; Under the library component, it was proposed to develop 4000 school libraries and the type of aid provided was of three categories as indicated in the table below.  The project will benefit about 4.1 million students in Sri Lanka by improving education quality and it will improve education quality by: restructuring the teacher education pre-service (initial training) programs; consolidating and coordinating teacher education; strengthening and rationalizing the number of training institutions to increase equity; upgrading the academic and management skills of teacher trainers and managers; modifying teacher hiring practices; strengthening the financial management of the teacher training institutions; supporting studies and technical assistance to improve education quality; and supplying funds for better equipment, books, and other teaching materials.

Definition
Senior schools with grades 10-13 Junior schools with classes from grades 1-9 Middle and small school in rural and urban areas TETD project consists of the following components; Rationalization of teacher deployment; Rationalization of structure and organization of teacher education; Upgrading of teacher education programs; Strengthening of staff and management; Strengthening and upgrading of the teacher training institutions; Strengthening the management of teacher training institutions; Studies and monitoring; and Project coordination. (World Bank 1996) Under component 3upgrading of teacher education programs, seventeen National Colleges of Education (NCOEs) were developed with the project aid to provide pre-service education for teachers. It was planned to introduce, in each of these colleges, Library and Information Science with the objective of catering to the staff requirements of the 4000 libraries developed under GEP2 and also the libraries of other schools and to train teachers to support the student-centred resource based education system, which is a major emphasis of the policy reforms. An international consultant was invited from Tasmania by the project officials under the guidance of NIE in 1999 to draft a curriculum in LIS for NCOEs and this consultant carried out curriculum development activities in consultation with the authorities of the National Institute of Education (NIE). NIE was involved in this process since curriculum development for teacher education is one of their responsibilities.
The curriculum developed by this consultant contained three modes; Mode 1incorporates a general compulsory module of 60 hours designed to introduce libraries and the process of accessing and recording information to all student teachers. On completion of the module it is expected that the participants will be able to access and record the information found in the NCOE libraries. It is also expected that once they are in schools after completion of the training, they will support promotion of reading among school children across the curriculum.
Mode 2this is intended for those who are interested in offering LIS as a major with English as a minor subject. The programme consists of 1879 hours (including teaching practices) across two academic years. The specific LIS component consists of 356 hours of LIS and 550 hours of library related projects. This mode is expected to provide a detailed training in organisation, operation, utilization and promotion of the library service within the school community. The outlines of the LIS minor and major components are given in the tables below.

Impact on LIS education
The library component brought about unprecedented developments in the school library sector and library education. Following sections will discus the impact on training of teacher librarians, training of ministry officials, establishment of NlLlS and reading promotion project.

Training of Teacher librarians
In 1998 a national consultant was appointed for a period of three months to develop a school library policy and standards and the prepared documents were submitted to the MOE for acceptance.
Several suggestions were made to develop school library staffs; from the 2000 personnel identified as working in school libraries only about 350 has had any library qualifications. A three-day refresher course was planned for these library staff. Training another 250 librarians at certificate or diploma level was recommended for Type A libraries. It was also suggested to provide a 3 months training for one teacher from each of the 1750 Type B libraries. The major focus of the project was on retraining teachers for these libraries instead of recruiting library staff. (Project Implementation Plan 1 996).
However resulting from a political decision, actions were taken in 1998 to staff the 4000 libraries which came under the Library Component of GEP2, with 4000 fresh graduates recruited by the government. A consultant was invited from the UK to prepare a training programme for these 4000 personnel designated as Library Development Officers (LDOs). The consultant designed a five-day training workshop and developed a corresponding manual. A group of about 50 library professionals selected from the university libraries, national library and some special and public libraries were given a short training in using the manual to train the LDOs. National Library and Documentation Services Board and the SLDU co-ordinated the implementation of this series of five-day training programmes at provincial level covering all 4000 LDOs in 1998 and 1999.
Nevertheless, recruitment of new staff was against the initial agreement between the World Bank and the government of Sri Lanka and they disagreed with this initiative. As a result Ministry of Education was compelled to remove the LDOs from the school libraries and assign them to school offices.
In 2002, upon a decision made by the then Minister of School Education, a teacher from each school which received library support under GEP2 was identified to be in charge of the school library. Another five day training programme was planned by NlLlS with a review of the previous manual to include more teacher librarian aspects than traditional library aspects. These fiveday programmes were conducted throughout the country by NlLlS in collaboration with the provincial education offices. A total of 2800 teachers were trained and they were assigned the responsibility of the school library in addition to classroom teaching.
In 2005 again newly qualified graduates were recruited by a1 1 provincial education departments as well as by the Ministry of Education as Teacher Librarians. This is first time they were directly recruited as teacher librarians.
An evaluative study done in 2004, of the effectiveness of the LIS curriculum of the NCOEs mentioned in section 3.2 brought to light several issues; this curriculum was more biased towards traditional librarianship with more emphasis on library administration, cataloguing and classification. Due to this, the student teachers who offered LIS as a major were experiencing difficulties in undergoing internship in schools. They had no subject content to practice in the classroom as far as LIS was concerned. At the same time it was essential for them to undergo a certain number of hours in teaching practice and to avoid administrative issues these student teachers were teaching English during their internship though their major was LIS.
Emphasis on library administration was not in conformity with the training objectives. On the other hand, the curriculum had been changed to include more IT than the MOE had initially planned therefore and those who qualified in the years 2003 and 2004 have been appointed as IT teachers instead of teacher librarians. A third issue identified was that there was no emphasis on the role of teacher librarian, the role of school libraries and resource centres in the school curriculum or on information literacy. Programmes offered by NlLlS strongly emphasised these aspects. Therefore the SLDU and the MOE authorities considered a revision of the NCOE curricula for the general and major modules. The author was appointed as a consultant to review and revise the General and Major LIS curriculum of the NCOEs.
The course outline of the proposed module basically consists of; introduction to the changing general education environment in Sri Lanka, Resource-based learning, lnformation literacy skills, Library as resource centre, Developing lnformation literacy skills, Study Tours to leading libraries. After reviewing the curriculum a five-day training was given to a group of lecturers from all NCOEs so that they can introduce the new general module on "Developing lnformation Skills" to all student teachers. Unfortunately the training of lecturers to implement the major module has not drawn the attention of the authorities despite stressing the necessity Jour~lal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka (Vol. 10) 2006 repeatedly. Those who teach the major module has no Masters level training in Librarianship or Teacher Librarianship. Therefore the quality of the major module is questionable.

Training of Ministry Officials
In order to develop managerial level professionals, GEP2 funded Masters level education of two Deputy Directors of the SLDU at Sheffield University, UK. Ten Deputy Directors from the Provincial Education Offices were funded to obtain MLS from University of Malaya, Malaysia. Three Assistant Librarians from the National Library & Documentation Services Board were funded to obtain MLS from the Universities of London, Sydney and Malaya.
In 2005 a series of three-day awareness programmes were conducted for the principals of the 4000 schools, which received library development support under the project. The objectives of the programmes were to provide an awareness of the significance of libraries in the education system, and the role of the teacher librarian and the training opportunities available for teacher librarians. Two Deputy Directors of the SLDU designed this programme in collaboration with the Provincial Deputy Directors, NILE and the National Library. Workshops were coordinated by the provincial education offices while the resource persons were drawn from the institutes involved with the design of the programme.

Establishment of NltlS
In 1998 establishment of the National Institute of Library & Information Sciences (NILIS) was started with the construction of the building funded by TETD. NlLlS was formally established in 1999 by an ordinance under section 18 and 24 of the Universities Act No. 16 of 1978 as an institution affiliated to the University of Colombo. The institute is given authority by the Ordinance to perform a number of functions and the following are some of such significant functions; to admit students; to provide for instruction, training and research in branches of LIS upon the recommendation of the institute and the university; to determine the postgraduate degrees, diplomas, certificates and other academic distinctions to be awarded in LIS; to conduct examinations and award postgraduate degrees, diplomas, certificates and other academic distinctions in LIS; to co-operate by way of exchange of teachers, students and scholars with universities or institutions in Sri Lanka or abroad, having similar objectives to those of NlLlS and to institute and award fellowships, scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, medals and other prizes; In 1999 a consultant was appointed from Canada to plan curricula for NILIS. A range of education and training programmes were identified to suit different categories of officers. i.e. school library administrators, principals, teachers. school librarians etc. But a considerable amount of further expansions of these plans were necessary before implementing them.
In 2003 N I L E started its formal education programmes for the first time. Up to 2005 NlLlS has conducted many short and long term programmes as indicated in table four. In addition, about 3500 have followed various workshops, including the five-day introductory workshop for teacher librarians, conducted by NlLlS covering many aspects of librarianship. Further information of N ILIS, its academic and administrative environment and the education and training programmes can be found in Wijetunge (2003a) and Wijetunge (2003b) respectively. 127 GEP2 related objective of establishing NILE was to train administrators, teachers and other staff for school libraries. Yet with the removal of LDOs from the school libraries NlLlS lost its major target group for training. Even though 2800 teachers were given five day training and in 2005 about one thousand new graduates were recruited as teacher librarians, still their enthusiasm for training is weak because the promotions schemes and other administrative issues of this new post are not formalized yet. As a consequence NlLlS which was established to train about 300-400 students a year has not been able to function in its full capacity yet.

Reading Promotion
Book-Based Language Enrichment Programme (BOBLEP), though not directly related to libraries requires a mention here as it serves to promote the reading habit among school children.
In 1 994 International Book Development (IBD) and Canadian Organisation for Development through Education (CODE) recommended the introduction of mini libraries in the schools, to the MOE of Sri Lanka. In 1995, Wendy Pye Ltd. of New Zealand accepted a contract with IBD to undertake a "Book Flood" project in a sample of primary schools. This company provided funds for books, training and evaluating the impact of the project. A sample of 20 small schools from Kegalle district and 10 similar schools from Colombo District as a control group were selected for the project.
The pilot project was successful and as a result a proposal to expand the project to 200 schools was accepted as part of the GEP2. A national co-ordinator was appointed and the project was named BOBLEP. A full description of the original pilot project can be found in Elly (1 998) and Kuruppu (2001). After a period of 12 months BOBLEP was evaluated and resulting from its success, it was expanded to a further 600 schools and again to a further 2000 schools. Later the MOE decided to expand the project to all schools and to introduce the project to teachers through National Colleges of Education (NCOEs) A set of English books were distributed to about 7000 schoolsexcept to those which do not have primary classes. These include schools which received library support from GEP2, and schools which did not receive such support as well as Types C schools. Only "Big Books" (large size picture books with limited text designed to teach English language) have been distributed to Type C schools. Books provided by BOBLEP are kept with the school principals or English teachers and are not accessioned in to the library.
When the pilot project was started, eight provincial co-ordinators and eight provincial BOBLEP trainers attended two-week training at Wendy Pye Ltd. in 1. A two-day workshop in shared reading, reading stories aloud by the teacher, role playing of stories, language study, book care and storage and making of big books. 2. A one-day workshop to consolidate the above and to introduce paired reading, silent reading, questioning techniques, and simple story writing based on books. 3. A one-day workshop for sharing experiences, receiving feedback, displaying samples created by children i.e. masks, puppets and big books.
During a World Bank Review Mission in 2002 it was recommended that NILIS should incorporate reading promotion activities in its programmes in order to sustain the project after the completion of GEP2. It was also decided by the World Bank mission to allocate funds . to provide one-week training to the academic staff of NlLlS by an international consultant.
All lecturers of NCOEs were also given training in integrating BOBLEP into preservice teacher training programmes. Training has also been given to 94 Teacher Training Centre Managers, Additional Directors of Education in English, In Service Advisors and 110 zonal co-ordinators. A second group of zonal BOBLEP trainers attended a short-term training, which was similar to the first two-week training, at Wendy Pye Ltd. New Zealand, in 2004.
The English Library Activities Development Committee established in 2004 to advise on matters relevant to libraries and English activities, decided to instruct the principals to handover the BOBLEP books to the school library and to get them accessioned in the school library Accessions Register and for the teachers to borrow them from the library according to their needs. This decision was made because in certain schools, books were kept under lock and key without being used. By handing over the books to the library it was expected that all students of the school will have access to the colourful and attractive picture books, which will stimulate their reading interests. Librarians and teachers are expected to provide different activities based on the contents of the books to encourage the children to read.

Conclusion
The school library sector, which received little attention since independence, received substantial consideration in the new general education policy reforms. The school libraries component of GEP2 pumped in large amounts of funds to develop infrastructures and book collections. Rural libraries, which could not have otherwise afforded such innovations, were given AV equipment as well as computers under the project.
A significant outcome of the project is that a number of personnel from key organisations getting trained in foreign universities at Masters level in LIS. In the local context 4000 graduates were given a five-day training in LIS although they were transferred out of libraries at a later stage, and at a later stage another 2800 teachers were given a similar training. Minor staff of the school libraries is provided a training opportunity by NlLlS to upgrade their knowledge. The provincial level officers trained at Masters level are assigned to provinces to support the library development activities. Awareness programme offered to 4000 principals contributed to change the negative attitudes of many principals towards the school library and to perceive the library as a key element in the teachingllearn ing process.
The most imperative impact of the general education policy reforms can be mentioned as the establishment of the National Institute of Library and lnformation Sciences (NILIS) under the school libraries component. Although this was funded by the World Bank with the main objective of training staff for school libraries. NlLlS is vested with powers to provide education and training for other types of libraries as well and many more innovative programmes are to be offered in future.
There are many shortcomings in the implementation of libraries component but it can be concluded that the general education reforms made a significant impact on LIS education in Sri Lanka.