Yesterday morning, Dilum and I met with J.H.S. Jayamaha, Assistant Director of English Education in the Wilgamuwa District. He has been in Wilgamuwa for 15 years as an English teacher and now as an administrator. Although there is a Ministry of Education that sets standards and policies, Mr. Jayamaha insures that those policies are implemented in the Wilgamuwa District.
Mr.Jayamaha gave me some background information about Wilgamuwa schools:
There are 47 schools in Wilgamuwa but only 16 trained English teachers; 22 others teach English in the District but those 22 have no training.
Of the schools, 7-8 offer up to A Level; 6 offer up to O Level and the rest are primary only (1-5)
There are 7654 students in grades 1-13. 625 sat for the O Level exam last year and 25.4% passed. The drop out rate is very high though he could not give any data. Wilgamuwa does have vocational schools for students who do not finish the public schools but few take advantage of this. Mr. Jayamaha said, “Many have one foot in school and another in the garment factories.”
Although currently, the National Exams have no oral language component, beginning in 2012, oral language will comprise 30% of the final score on the test. As a result, both the Ministry, Mr. Jayamaha and the teachers recognize that getting students to speak and communicate is essential. Currently, the curriculum in the schools requires almost no oral communication—it is exclusively reading and writing.
Mr. Jayamaha will arrange for me to visit schools in the next few weeks. I am going to focus on the schools of the 6 teacher trainees I’m working with, and 3 of them have already told their students to expect me. My ability to visit the schools depends on my other responsibilities at Saaraketha – if I have to teach several other classes in addition to the teacher trainees, I may not be able to visit all 6 schools. I am going to try to make a site visit on Thursday of this week.
Mr. Jayamaha is very focused – almost exclusively so – on the idea of an English camp. I discuss in more detail in my other blog post what we agreed on. Obviously, only a very small number of students can take advantage of an English camp – realistically, no more than 100 or so per year, but I think it’s something that Elizabeth and I can plan and maybe do one while we are here. If nothing else, it will satisfy and encourage Mr. Jayamaha and be a springboard for future collaboration.
Mr. Jayamaha was open to my suggestion that focusing on teacher professional development is the key to pedagogical change. It’s unclear how much effort he’s willing to personally make to organize anything and when Dilum asked if he would release teachers during the school day to come to Saaraketha and participate in activities, he was noncommittal. I think if we presented some specific idea he might agree though he would have to be involved as well because he cannot legally release teachers without his own participation at a PD.
Basically, Mr. Jayamaha is open to ideas, focused on getting students to speak more, and positive about Saaraketha. He listened politely to my ideas about movie nights and teas without getting too excited. (Though he did offer that students like The Sound of Music.) I think he would be willing to support most ideas that are brought to him within reason.
Dilum took separate notes so he may also have some opinions on this meeting.
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