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Nothing could be more humiliating to conceited politicians with massive egos to nurse than having to swallow their pride and own up to their blunders. Cabinet ministers in charge of education and higher education have had to do just that.
A few months ago we had Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake and Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena vehemently defending a formula devised by a UGC-appointed expert committee to calculate the Z-score for university admissions. Flaunting it as flawless, they flayed its critics trenchantly. They would hold forth in Parliament and in TV talk shows so passionately and confidently that even President Mahinda Rajapaksa may have bought into their arguments. (He should have known better than to believe in his ministers` claims, pronouncements and rhetoric.)
Minister Dissanayake seems to have come to his senses following a blistering gavel blow he suffered at the hands of the judiciary. He has apparently realised the futility of defending the indefensible. He told Parliament on Wednesday, in answer to a question from the Opposition, that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had appointed a three-member expert committee headed by Prof. R. O. Thattil, who introduced the Z-score as a scaling method to rank students for university admissions in 2001, to advise the government on how to implement the Supreme Court order on Z-score calculation. Interestingly, it was only a few moons ago that government politicians pooh-poohed Prof. Thattil`s views on the Z-score and even cast aspersions on him as they found it impossible to counter his arguments against their method.
It is heartening that sanity has prevailed at long last. Had the President set up a high-powered committee consisting of independent experts a few months ago to inquire and find out what had really gone wrong with the new Z-score formula, the unholy mess his government as well as the country was plunged into could have been avoided. However, better late than never!
Far be it from us to tell the government what it should learn from the respected judges as regards the Z-score calculation or to interpret the Supreme Court judgment at issue. That is best left to the apex court and legal bigwigs. However, the Higher Education Ministry pundits who muck up systems that work perfectly and then desperately try to put them right need to be told in no uncertain terms that they should not waste any more time at Hulftsdorp on some flimsy pretext.
The Z-score scheme was successfully implemented in 2001 in respect of two groups of students who had sat the GCE A/L examination one offered three subjects and the other four. The Thattil method helped tackle a more complex problem than the one at hand and was in operation smoothly until 2011, when politicians, bureaucrats and their experts made a mess of it.
How to set about the task of clearing the mess is only too well known. Blundering politicians and bureaucrats only have to undo what they have done! It is hoped that the newly appointed presidential committee will be able to knock some sense into them and guide them on the correct path.
President Rajapaksa is in an unenviable position. Nothing gets done without his intervention and he has to undo what his ministers do. His wisdom of appointing a jumbo Cabinet stands questioned. He can do without most of his ministers, we reckon.
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