Sri Lanka has to fix primary schools as well as universities

Sept 24, 2013 (LBO) - Sri Lanka has to fix its primary school system where up to half the students are failing their junior high school exam, as well as universities, researchers and productive sector officials said. "Sri Lanka has to invest more in primary schooling," Sujatha Gamage, an educational specialist from LirneAsia, a regional think tank said.

"The output from our schools is the input of our universities."

She said out of the children who enrolled in schools in 2,000, 50 percent failed to pass in six subjects at the General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level, a nationwide lower high school level exam that is held in the 10th year.

Gamage was speaking at a LBR-LBO CFO forum on "Middle Income Economy Challenges: Private Sector Perspectives."

Middle income countries especially those that some economists describe as being in a 'trap' are those with per capita gross domestic product of less than 10,000, who stagnate at that level for a long time without moving higher, though definitions vary.

Anushka Wijesinghe, an Economist at the Institute of Policy Studies o