Congratulations Kumar Sangakkara for being shortlisted for all main awards

ICC AWARDS 2012

Kumar Sangakkara, the wicket-keeper batsman of the Sri Lankan squad is the only person who has been nominated for the main ICC awards 2012 to be announced on 15^th September 2012. The nominations are for ICC Cricketer of the Year, ICC Test Cricketer of the Year and ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year.

This is a singular honor for the Country and for Kumar Sangakkara himself who has excelled himself in all departments as the nominations are from elite professionals who are aware either former players, members of the media, representatives of the ICC panel of umpires and match referees.

This means that in the overall context of Cricket, Test cricket and One Day Cricket Sanga has outshone in all departments of the game from behavior to performance. In the history of Cricket no person has received all these nominations in one go, and in one year, as he has already received nominations in the past on different departments in previous years.

There is a severe absence of compliments from anyone instrumental in Sri Lanka Cricket or in Politics for this achievement and this smacks of a lack of respect for his independence and his outspokenness in the interests of the Cricket.

I know that he does not really want respect from those least qualified to give it to him, but I just wish to point out the irony in this respect as we have pontificators for the interests of cricket, but when we have achievers in this game they do not receive the kudos from the ‘pontificators’

It is important that youth have a role model, with values, that can be shown as ones to be emulated by young people. Sri Lanka is badly in need of sufficient number of such role models. We must encourage them and give them a chance to speak to the youth and get them involved in useful activities that will help their leadership qualities and empower them as future leaders of Sri Lanka.

Z score – a dirty word that doesn’t go away, is the bane of all who confront it

This method was introduced a few years ago to kill two birds with one stone. One was to restrict entry into the University as there are only places for 15% or less of those who sit A level exams. The second was to arrive at a different cut off mark for districts so that there is a fair representation across the country. This simple concept that translated into an incomprehensible statistical figure, determined the fate of many a young man or woman in Sri Lanka, especially as it related to educated youth who wished to get a degree and rise up the greasy pole of employment. The two criteria were acted on by using the ubiquitous cut off mark known as the Z score that determined who got in and who is left out!

What it did mean is that even if one had 3 A’s at A levels, one was not certain of getting into the University of your choice or any at all, if there were thousands ahead of one in the district. This happened this time round to an even greater extent. It must be remembered that 60% of schools only offer 3 subjects at A level, for which there is a reasonable carder of teacher, namely, Sinhala, Buddhist Civilization and Political Science. The problem is that even in the Kegalle District, I know for a fact that if you had 3 A’s in these subjects your District rank could be as high as 1000 meaning that in that subject stream that there are over a thousand with higher marks, and therefore the cut off to university could be up to rank 500. In theory there would be over 500 students who have achieved 3 As at A levels and could not obtain entrance into the University system.

The expectation of students and parents are then shattered as the value assigned to an A in these subjects is diminished and due to the use of standard deviations when a high population achieves high marks, the Z score could be low!

The dilemma is hard to comprehend. So it MUST be made clear to students following such subjects that even A grades are not sufficient to gain entry into University and it depends on how high the mark is for them to come within the space allocation.

It is important that these myths are quickly extinguished, and students led into courses that are needed and for which places are available, and not to ones that are tough to enter due to the supply which exceeds the places as in the case for these Arts and Social Sciences Courses. In my view the subjects referred to above should be drastically cut, as students following them have no chance whatsoever of entering University with them, and parents MUST be informed about it well in advance of disappointments, especially at the point they are chosen.

The challenge facing Youth – clueless about how to land a job

The incessant stream of CV from young people ranging from 18 to 28 for jobs ANY JOBS is a heart wrenching cry for independence by desperate youth who want a living wage. Fortunately for them, they live at home and have no great rush to get into the job market, so they are picky and want jobs that are not out there.

Little do they realize that the most important point in employment is the record of consistent work at one place however low the wages are and however tough the conditions. You cannot buy your way into a record of work. You have work it, earn it , and live it. Our young people just do not understand that. So when jobs are offered, they are refused, as that is not the type of job they were hoping to get!

On the one hand they are pleading with me for a job, any job, and on the other hand when I place them somewhere in an area where there is great potential, they say it is not up their street. It is this dilemma that I have to deal with, and I am frustrated because when I direct youth into areas where there is potential for the quick rewards they are looking for, they do not wish to pursue, as it involves a little effort! I had a person come into the office this week saying that they are looking for youth with a good personality to train as insurance salesman, who will be selling the pension product of a particular insurance company, and depending on the success of getting people to buy into the policies, could in 3 months be earning close of Rs50,000 a month. Even an A level is not necessary.

I contacted numerous on my database of youth looking for jobs, and even without going through their free, one day leadership seminar, to learn about the products and about themselves, they declined, saying it is not up their street. The latter thought is suspect as I know they do not really know what the job entails, and at least they should try and find out by attending the events laid on for prospective recruits. Word of mouth of hearsay is simply not sufficient for them to make up their minds that those jobs are not good. While I am willing to admit that it will attract a certain dedicated individual with congruent life goals, it is nevertheless important to attend the seminars to determine one’s aptitude for such jobs.

I appeal to young people not to have preconceived notions of what employment is and to simply take anything they can get their hands on and with the experience one gains in any employment the maturity that one gets will enable one to know exactly what one wants and then take the necessary steps to achieve those goals. Without the initial work experience to gain the practice of getting to work on time, and showing consistent timely attendance it is impossible to show one can hold on to a job and perform, despite the obstacles most jobs place on one.

Are you fickle? They don’t even know what it means as it is considered normal!

In contemporary Sri Lanka, the word of a young person is as good as hot air, only around for a few seconds. They are the most unreliable segment of the population and in organizing youth activities one has to be cognizant of this fact if one is to keep sane. There is a way to tackle this situation, as it has to be of use to the person concerned. There is just no point in getting them to do any favors for anyone, unlike in the past where they performed out of duty or obligation. Today there is no duty or obligation. Those words just do not matter in a world of greed and opportunism, and the Youth have mastered this faster than any other segment of the population. Is it any wonder why older people today just frown upon the young as having no ethics, morals or a sense of duty? To young people of today anyone older than themselves is just a fuddy duddy not worth their time, unless of course they can get some personal and not communal benefit out of them.

In a sense one has to take the law of probabilities a little more seriously in one’s dealing them, especially male, as females are still a little more dependable and reliable and are also more responsible when tasks are assigned to them.

When young people are fickle there is a method to exploit this behavior by informing them that they missed out on a glorious stroke of good fortune as they were not able to take advantage, by their absence. There is nothing more penetrating to a psyche than being told that your unreliability cost you big.

In my experience I know when I invite 100 youth to an event, the number who actually say they will come and turn up is under 50%. One therefore has to take that into account when doing this type of invitation. When there is nothing but an obligation with little perceived benefit to them, then the take up rate is less than 25%. When one takes account of these factors and operate under that, it is easier to organize events and make guesstimations.

This when added to the Sri Lankan inability to say no to one’s face, the presence of the probability factor plays a huge part in the expected turnout. The threat of eviction from a program and one’s rights being suspended are other means by which one gets a better rate of attendance especially at events that are important, and the participation of the particular young person is too. The showing of one’s face to say they turned up is one of the most annoying characteristics of youth as they do it for no other purpose, but not to lose out on any benefit allocated to the presence. The handing out of certificates of participation at the end is a suggestion to this thorny and sensitive issue, as expectations are nevertheless high.

Where are the Parents? – Part 2 – Displaying total ignorance!

In an earlier blog entry, I was castigating the parents for not coming to many open fora, and demonstrations that have taken place in defense of the students who have suffered as a result of the Z score crisis, that has yet to be resolved, when the Government is particularly mired in a swamp of its own making, due mostly to the ignorance of their leadership of what it all means, and how it must be resolved.

In my view parents who spend a small fortune to educate their children in the state sector despite the supposedly free education system (here I do not wish to encompass the sacrifice of parents who send their children to the international sector) seem to have dropped out of the picture as in the needed pressure on the government to address the plight of the kids, who find themselves thoroughly confused when their Z scores and district rankings, which have taken a huge turn for the worse between the results published on 25^th December 2011 and the revised ones published for the same exam on June 25^th 2012!!

Where are the parents? I ask this time and again. They must follow through on their investment, otherwise their sacrifice is completely in vain. They must be at the forefront of demonstration outside Temple Trees, as otherwise there will be no action on the part of the President. Let us remember in Sri Lanka that all corrective action only originates from the President’s office as all the Ministers in Government are mere puppets with no teeth to take any action, unless sanctioned by the ruler himself.

The parents owe it to themselves to take the bull by the horns, form a team and be visible; hold a vigil outside of Temple Trees. Kids who agitate are generally taken for a hike, as they are all misinterpreted as JVP pawns. Their demonstration does not help anyone. So if the MOMS AND DADS come out to demonstrate it will definitely be far more effective. It is in their self interests as their sons and daughters are bound to tell them once they bring out the cost of education to their charges, that they were not there for them “when it truly mattered.”

I know that parents are completely ignorant about Z scores just like most of us in Sri Lanka. That by the way is NO excuse not to do anything about it. You giving up on your biggest investment in your life without a whimper and you are permitting the state to ride roughshod over you like a roller to flatten you and take every breath out of you, in this complacent and uncaring way. Rise up before it is too late and stand up for injustice, as that is what it truly is, before your very inaction is taken by the state for tacit approval of their policies and actions.

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.

Hopeless in Sri Lanka

I was reading an article about the overwhelming desire, if given half a chance, of youth in Sri Lanka to emigrate, preferably never to return! from the shores of this country. It is a damning indictment of the way the people in power over our history have managed expectations. Basically ZILCH!!(not managed but destroyed it!)

Is there any hope left? If everyone who wishes to leave is able to leave we will be a country of geriatrics, withering away with nothing to look forward to. We have not built a sense of patriotism and love for the country. All the talk in the media about patriotism therefore is just for personal glory and not based on any real feeling. In short baloney.

If predictions are true, and current population trends are followed it is likely that in about 50 years the population of this country will be about half of what it is today. If conditions overseas permit Sri Lankans to live overseas, then they will not return, that is those who currently only go for a few years to earn those extra bucks to buy life’s goodies which a local paycheck does not permit them.

It is said that many Sri Lankans who go overseas engage in jobs they would never be seen dead doing here. They go out of necessity and because those jobs still pay better than here. So the education they received to be a garbage cleaner in a foreign land is also wasted. What we need is a national debate first, where we are able to discuss the alternatives available both here and overseas and determine how we can fulfill the expectations of youth here in a practical sense. It is not that there are no opportunities, but we need to know what opportunities there are and try and direct youth to them, rather than them getting an education in areas there are just NO opportunities for them.

It is interesting to note that the opportunities that are absent here are present in other countries. So a young person goes and works as a cleaner, and then sees opportunities open to him, so he goes to night school and gets a diploma or degree, which he then leverages up to a better job, and so on goes up by his own effort, not subsidized by a family or government. His sense of achievement then is even greater and his sense of desire to achieve is also that much greater. If only we in Sri Lanka were able to show him that road ahead, however tough or hard, it is nevertheless achievable.

It is this latter challenge that must be started at an earlier age, before the young person suddenly finds himself unemployable. We see so many people who want a job, but have no clear concept of work. They do not know what it entails, or what they want. They require some early grasp of what it is to work, about discipline and what employers expect from their workforce. No wonder on the one hand employers are desperately searching for suitably qualified people, and on the other there are so many unemployable young intelligent people, if only they were able to fill those vacancies.

It is the duty of our society in Sri Lanka today to identify this issue, and find practical solutions to it as part of a revised Education Policy framework, that puts the welfare of the young person first, and provides him or her with tools to succeed

Where are the parents? – when it comes to bat for their kids? – Z score

I was at a discussion at the Official Residence of the Mayor of Colombo, yesterday, 1^st of August 2012. The notification was in the Newspapers for anyone who wished to discuss their grievances regarding the Z score results to meet with the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe and to inform him of what it is they wished to do about. It was a reasonable request to make, so that the Opposition as a whole can request in Parliament, for a solution based on the requests made by the public who have been affected by this hiatus. There is nothing more important in a society, where anyone with a grievance has an ear to a politician who is able to represent them in a forum that can actually provide relief or offer a solution.

The Government has clearly got itself into a huge muddle over this Z score. The President is floundering, daily requesting for reports on the matter. Even MP Namal Rajapakse is making off the cuff unconsidered statements, that no one will be inconvenienced as a result of getting a lower mark, without SPECIFICALLY saying what they will do about it. The Human Rights Commission has got 1650 complaints, but even they do not know what to do about it, and how to handle the problem, except for appealing to the government to do something about it.

So when a discussion with the full glare of the media was announced, I expected parents with their sons and daughters in tow to come to the Mayor’s residence to express their views and desires on behalf of them. I only saw one DAD with a daughter who came in a motorcycle on this traffic free Poya Day to attend this event. All this benefits the government because when people affected by this do not express their grievances, out of fear of repression or otherwise, it makes for a poor democracy. It is also a fact of life, that parents and kids are frightened to openly express their dissatisfaction, lest the Govt. picks on them and ensures that they are punished for speaking out. That is sadly the state of the nation today.

The reality is that ‘A’ level results in general and the Z score in particular have lost credibility. Due to this the whole free education system in Sri Lanka has taken a beating, where any parent who has the means will try and get their children into private or international schools, for them to sit foreign exams that are held in higher regard!

The Leader of the Opposition was questioning the use of the Z score as a means of determining University entry, and suggested that there might be more equitable means of entry. There is simply the law of supply and demand in this crush for higher education, and how does one fairly manage that? Don’t PARENTS CARE?

Complaints to Human Rights Commission re the Z score – reach 1675 so far

The latest twist in the tale of the Z score calamity is that a large number of students who personally believe that their rights have been violated have filed complaints with the HRC, hoping the latter would intercede on their behalf for them to obtain justice.

Put simply, the calculation of the Z score is only understood by a few experts in statistics, whose baby it was. I was created to find a means to restrict entry into the University, only for the places available. The cut off mark for each Type of Degree, University and Faculty was simply done by way of the Z score one received in the District where one sat the exam, to match places with entrants.

Once it was proved that the previous calculation was flawed, a new calculation was done, and that resulted in some students getting a higher Z score and others a lower one. Of course those with the lower scores are the ones who feel their fundamental rights to enter the University System in Sri Lanka has been violated. They are therefore doing everything in their power to ensure that they do not miss out on the coveted University place, and are therefore demanding justice in light of their initial belief that they also entered University, and now the dream is shattered!

The opposition has demanded that these rights be granted, but in reality that may result in 4,000 additional students being admitted to University at the next intake. A further complication arises over which University and faculty they should be admitted to. Medicine, considered within the Bio Sciences Faculty; would they have entered Medical College under the previous score, and should they therefore be allowed to get into medical school despite the current score showing they cannot enter? These are real issues to be resolved, which have no resolution to date

On a broader matter, A level results determine the direction a Sri Lankan student’s future. Many mistakenly believe the better the score, the better their life chances are, when in fact one’s opportunities and direction is determined by a whole series of facts, with Z score being just one. It is important to keep this balance in mind and not allow one’s whole mental well being to be destroyed due to a result. It is easier to say, but there have been a few attempted suicides of students who have received a lower score, and who have suddenly seen their belief in a particular field of study being shattered. It is important that when the authorities play with the lives of students they do not shatter their belief in the Free Education system of Sri Lanka, which appears to have happened lately. We must take measures to restore confidence in the Examination system, by a sea change!! What is the that change?