Education reforms for uncertain times: Think big, keep it simple and act fast

The national curriculum framework launched in July 2025 (NCF-2025) is not an education reform plan by any means. It is a patchwork of borrowed concepts applied on the same old framework and produced by a bureaucracy stunted by frequent changes of leadership and lack of direction in the last few years. The proposed implementation process is too slow with the new textbooks and workbooks to be introduced Grade 1 and 6 in 2026, followed by other grades in subsequent years. The slow process is a blessing in disguise. It allows the new government to think bigger and reformulate a real education reform plan for execution as soon as possible.

Thinking big would be to imagine our schools as places that produce globally competitive youth by or before, say 2027. Keeping-it-simple and Acting Fast are two strategies that necessarily go with such a bold vision.

Thinking big does not necessarily mean we need to do more or spend more.  As the world becomes more complex and uncertain, objectives of education must become simpler. As an OECD report on “Future of Education and Skills in 2030” notes: “How can we prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created; and ask schools to use technologies that have not yet been invented?” In fact, education systems world over are thinking big but simplifying their curricula and assessments as a strategy. Recent reforms in India, New Zealand, and Singapore are examples. Broadly defined “foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) for all” is the centerpiece of their reforms.

Time is also of the essence for meaningful reforms, especially for Sri Lanka. Trends in the number of births in Sri Lanka in recent times are such that a boom in the number of youth leaving school from 2025 to 2031 is expected to be followed by a rapid reduction of this pipeline from about 360,000 a year to about 322,000 in ten years. Essentially, the cohort of school leavers from 2025-2031 is our last demographic dividend.

For too long we have wasted our most valuable resource, our youth, by over-dependance on the pass rates of the grade five scholarship examination (G5SE), the GCE O/L, and the GCE A/L, taken at the end of Grades 5, 11 and 13, respectively, as performance measures for schools. The curriculum is excessive in scope and heavy with content, and schools struggle to find suitable teachers and/or cover the syllabi with existing teachers. A tuition industry has grown to fill the vacuum and teach-to-the-exam, producing generations of rote learners.

The curriculum proposed in the NCF-2025 is more cumbersome than what it replaces. The new secondary curriculum lists 28 subjects, 53 modules and 12 transversal modules, but continues to offer the five core subjects in a one-size-fits-all mode. In contrast, the latest secondary curriculum in Singapore, for example, offers twelve subjects, with only eight of those being examinable ones and core subjects offered at foundational, normal, and express levels.

The new secondary curriculum changes in Singapore and the announced plan by the New Zealand Ministry of Education in August 2025 to replace the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), their GCE O/L equivalent,  with foundational literacy and numeracy awards are two international practices of note.  

Rethinking the secondary curriculum is especially important for Sri Lanka where 55% of youth who entered school in 2011, say, failed to complete eleven or thirteen years of education as per required number of passes at the GCE O/L or A/L., not counting those who repeat exams. The reason is that a one-size-fits-all curriculum and assessments are offered to all students irrespective of whether one student is aiming to do higher studies in Math, for example, and another needs math for life or math for a craft or a vocation he/she intends to practice.

What is needed is as straight forward as setting achievable targets and carrying out national assessments for simple but critical learning outcomes like “Foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN)” and “functional English proficiency” at key stages of education for all. More difficult targets can be established later.

Focusing on “FLN and functional English for all” does not require more teacher training, textbooks, or materials. Literacy and numeracy are what you acquire through the curriculum, and we already have an education system dedicated to teaching to the curriculum, whether under the old curriculum or the 2025 revision. The definition of literacy and numeracy is much broader now and essentially follows the adage that learning is what is left after you have forgotten all that you learned. For example, according to UNESCO, literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world. Numeracy is defined similarly. Model FLN assessments can be borrowed from other countries and adapted for Sri Lanka. Assessments for higher Order literacy and numeracy are available through international assessments such as Program for Student Assessments (PISA) by OECD and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

Testing students in Grades 6, 9 and 11 for functional English is a critical feature of a transformational education. English language proficiency is key to being globally competitive. What is needed is a suitable national assessment to incentivize schools to pay more attention to teaching English. Schools and parents put a tremendous effort into getting their students/children to pass national examinations because the pass rates at those examinations are considered the key performance indicator of education. Instead, if FLN and functional English proficiency of all children are considered the key performance measures, the system will adjust accordingly. With the availability AI driven apps at reasonable costs available nowadays it would not be difficult to top up what is learned in school to acquire functional English proficiency.

For a start, we can begin with the proposal in the NCF-2025 for a foundational literacy and numeracy test at the end of Grade 9 where the current plan is to implement that only in 2029. That would be too little too late. The test must be developed in 2026 for implementation in grades 5, 9 and 11 in 2027. Then fifty-five percent of those who leave school without credentials to show for their time in school can exit honorably with a certificate of secondary school completion (CSSC) that includes their FLN proficiency. The opportunity to receive a completion certificate should be extended to past students beginning with those who would leave school in 2025 or 2026.

In this eight-part series, Dr. Sujata Gamage articulates why and how policymakers should formulate and execute plans as soon as possible to position the 2025-2031 cohort of school leavers for global competitiveness by  (1) Setting targets for foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) and assessing those skills nationally as KPIS for all key stages for school education; (2) Adding functional proficiency in English for all also as a national assessment  and a KPI (3) Participating in international benchmark assessments like PISA and TIMSS as the basis for global competitiveness in higher thinking skills; and (4) Increasing opportunities to develop ethics and soft skills for living in an IR4 era, by radically reducing the number subjects and modules to adding more co-curricular activities for a small set of subjects, as per global standards (5) Updating national assessment system (6) Bringing teacher inputs formally into the process through a National Teacher Council (6) Decentralizing all administration to provincial, zonal, divisional authorities or school clusters (7) Making private investments work for public objectives, and (8) Bridging the vocational training and higher education divide.

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