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Our omniscient ministers in charge of education and higher education and their bureaucratic geniuses have suffered a gavel blow each at the hands of learned judges. The Z-score judgment has left the government with egg on its face.
The Supreme Court on Monday declared the 2011 GCE (A/L) Z-score null and void and directed the University Grants Commission (UGC) to recalculate Z-score separately for the new and old syllabi. This is exactly what many an expert urged the government to do several moons ago. Prof. R.O. Thattil of the University of Peradeniya, who introduced the Z-score as a scaling method here, in his article, University admissions and the Z-score which The Island exclusively published on Jan. 12, 2012 suggested a solution: `Consider the two groups as two different populations and calculate the Z-score for each group separately using the (un-pooled) mean and variance for each subject. The average of the Z-scores of the three subjects can then be taken to obtain the ranks. This solution is simple and elegant.` If the government had been wise enough to heed his opinion and adopt his solution it would have been able to avoid its current predicament.
What an expert panel appointed by the UGC devised to calculate the Z-score was only a mathematical formula. It was no rocket science, though Minister of Education Bandula Gunawardena admitted in Parliament that he could not make head or tail of it. Anyone with a nodding acquaintance with statistics could see that it was flawed. Those who put their heads over the parapet to warn the government were disappointed as it, true to form, chose to put a brave face on the issue and ridicule the critics of the new formula including Prof. Thattil.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his wisdom, appointed a committee to ascertain only the causes of a district ranking error though several experts kept on telling him until they were blue in the face that the new Z-score formula was erroneous. Perhaps, his bungling ministers and advisors succeeded in making him believe that their critics were politically motivated or even TRAITORS. By the time Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake realised his blunder and offered an amicable settlement, it was too late. The Supreme Court turned down his motion to that effect.
Thankfully, the judiciary has come to our rescue once again and we can now heave a sigh of relief, but our problems are far from over. The ministers and their bureaucrats who defended the erroneous Z-score formula to the hilt even without understanding it, continue to make vital decisions, in the education sector, on far more complex matters that affect not only the future of our children but also that of the entire country.
School education is in crisis from A to Z (Admissions to Z-score) but Minister Gunawardena carries on regardless, wishing away serious problems. Minister Dissanayake seems to think he is capable of running universities without teachers, who naturally feel short-changed. He bulldozes his way through heedless of the consequences of his action. He has arbitrarily abolished the University of Visual and Performing Arts aptitude test in spite of protests from teachers and independent experts alike.
The Z-score fiasco serves as an example of what arrogance of power, ineptitude and inefficiency at the highest echelons of government do to a country. Nothing virtually gets done without the intervention of either the President or the Defence Ministry or the Supreme Court!
Trade unionists and Opposition politicians are calling upon the two beleaguered ministers to resign over the results mess-up. But, it is only wishful thinking that, in this country, politicians will bow to public pressure and step down. We, therefore, do not add our voice to the chorus. However, let the President be urged to save education and higher education from his bungling ministers.
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