Concerns about the impact of crisis on children in Sri Lanka

Introduction

The economic crisis in Sri Lanka in the beginning of 2022 has impacted upon various social institutions, including the schools and education system. Sri Lanka is facing severe shortages of foreign currency reserves – it was under default, unable to pay back its foreign debts, largely depreciating the value of the Sri Lankan rupee and resulting in serious inflation (Mehta, 2022; Perera, 2022). The inflation in Sri Lanka started in mid-2020 due to the rise of commodity prices on the global scale owing to COVID-19 (Arai, 2022). However, multiple issues magnified the economic situation, reaching the default observed in 2022. Subsequently, the people in Sri Lanka experienced frequent power cuts (Jayasuriya, 2022), beginning in December 2021, despite the government's assurance about petroleum stockpiles at the end of November 2021 (Arai, 2022). It became challenging to import petroleum, which worsened due to the Ukraine-Russo War (Tharoor, 2022), and further exacerbated because of insufficient foreign currency holdings (Arai, 2022). Thus, the manner in which school-going children are affected by the crisis in Sri Lanka is a critical concern.

The aim of this paper

This opinion piece has two purposes. First, it aims to identify the growing concerns about the impacts of the recent economic crisis on children in the schooling age in Sri Lanka. Second, it will argue about possible responses to the crisis – mutually supportive, democratic school communities, as an alternative to the previous authoritarian climate and opportunities from this crisis. The next section will identify the three issues – nutrition, learning loss and wellbeing of the children. Then, the concluding remarks will be drawn regarding the needs for building democratic schools.

Issues affecting the children

Nutrition issues of the children

Education leadership in Sri Lanka and related development organisations should urgently support school meal systems to address nutritional needs of all school aged children. This is because of an increasing risk of the children dropping out of the schools, due to the hardship to obtain the daily foods especially among the socio-economically disadvantaged households. Owing to the increase in commodity prices in Sri Lanka in 2022, the country's inflation peaked at 69.8% in September (Ondaatjie, 2022). This inflation largely hit households, limiting civilian budgets allocated to food. While the school meals are still provided, the budget size has been downscaled by two-thirds in January 2022, despite the households from those backgrounds relying on the programmes for their children's daily nutritious needs (Ferguson, 2022; International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, 2022). A survey by Save the Children in July 2022 found that more than 60% of families in Sri Lanka do not have sufficient food, including those for their children (Chia et al., 2022). World Food Programme (WFP) found still 32% of the population having issues of obtaining foods at the point of September 2022 and they have expanded the coverage of supplying the foods for the target populations through in-kind supports, inclusive of school means (WFP Sri Lanka, 2022). Similar types of efforts need to be done as a concerted effort.

Learning loss of the children

Education leadership in Sri Lanka and related development organisations should urgently work on protecting and securing the children from the risks of learning loss. Learning loss here means deprivation or loss of learning opportunities due to the school closure (Patrinos, 2022; Sabates et al., 2021; Skar et al., 2022) – and its impact would be more serious for those in socioeconomically disadvantaged groups due to the lack of access to the resources (Patrinos, 2022; Sabates et al., 2021; Skar et al., 2022). They should develop any channels of educational opportunities for the children regardless of whether online or face-to-face, as well as formal or non-formal. The deprivation of educational opportunities contributes to learning loss among children in Sri Lanka. Studies have regarded learning loss among children in developing countries during COVID-19 as a serious matter (Hossain, 2021), but in Sri Lanka, the situation has worsened due to the politico-economic crisis.

When schools were shut down, some schools attempted to switch their classes to online learning mode. However, the quality and consistency of online learning are questionable because of daily power outages. While parents have been forced to pay hefty prices for mobile data to facilitate continuous online connectivity for their children, unstable internet connection at home causes connectivity issues regularly (Jayakody, 2022). According to a survey by Save, 40.6% of households do not have access to the internet (Chia et al., 2022).

There should be subsidies or bursaries to the households with children in the schooling age. Moreover, the cost of living has been increasing at an alarming rate, adding undue pressure on parents. 33.9% of households find it difficult to expend on educational needs, such as books, uniforms, or other learning materials (Chia et al., 2022). Approximately 60% of them found that although educational materials are available, their costs have increased significantly (Chia et al., 2022). Originally, the public aspiration for education is very high in Sri Lanka, making the education system quite competitive (Lindberg, 2010). However, owing to the economic crisis, approximately 16.8% of the families who participated in the survey by Save the Children expressed doubts about their children attaining higher education (Chia et al., 2022).

The educational authorities may need to consider extending support to related service providers like transport systems to ensure schools are accessible for every student. During the first half of the year when fuel crisis was at its peak, parents could not bring children to schools due to a lack of transportation and increased transportation costs. Local school vans are a popular transport method used by students to commute between their houses and schools. These vans have stopped operating as the drivers cannot obtain fuel due to the fuel crisis (Jayakody, 2022). Intermittent curfews imposed in the country have also forced children and teachers to stay at home (Business Standard, 2022).

Another fundamental issue is to overcome the issues of the low salary for the teachers over the years (Aturupane and Little, 2021). The spike in commodity prices has also affected teachers, and their circumstances have become very challenging as well. According to some officers in the Colombo North Divisional Education Office, some teachers are more hesitant to attend school than students, especially those who live far away from the schools and find it difficult to commute (Jayakody, 2022). In the latter part of July 2022, the government declared that the schools would reopen, but the teachers’ unions rejected this policy, stating that the transportation would run short because of the insufficient allotment of vans for the schools (Christopher, 2022).

Well-being of the children

The educational authorities, international development donors and school leaders need to tackle with short-term and long-term concerns about the well-being of children. Regarding short-term concerns, some observations on the influence on children's emotions have been reported. In a survey by Save the Children, 12.7% of the parents or caregivers said that their children were experiencing a reduced appetite. Their children demonstrated more aggressive attitudes (9.7%), and find it difficult to concentrate on their studies (9.6%) (Chia et al., 2022). These changes may be due to the emotionally rooted frustrations in unstable home environments. Since the start of the crisis Sri Lankan households have been daily facing power outages. Children have been forced to endure physical discomfort due to humidity and high atmospheric temperature which under normal circumstances, would be alleviated by household cooling appliances. Island wide, those who complete school assignments are at home resorted to study by candle-light in the absence of energy to operate indoor lights. There is a growing concern that they may become targets of domestic violence and abuse at home because of the increased stress affecting all family members (Colombo Telegraph, 2022). Furthermore, throughout the entire period of school closure, children have fewer opportunities to connect with their peers (Colombo Telegraph, 2022).

Regarding long-term issues, there is concern about whether classrooms can be safe places for each child. School closure was a huge disruption for the children, especially from socioeconomically disadvantaged or marginalised backgrounds. The teachers were required to arrange new ways to support these children, according to an Irish study (O’Toole and Simovska, 2021). Furthermore, as observed by the parents or caregivers in the survey (Chia et al., 2022), aggressive behaviours or disengagement may be demonstrated in classrooms, including bullying or other forms of victimisation. The question is whether Sri Lankan teachers, who are also under heavy pressure in this crisis, can extend extra support to the children more than before while trying to protect the well-being of their family members and themselves, as found in Ireland (O’Toole and Simovska, 2021).

Moreover, there is growing concern about the future of children upon completion of school education, as there is inevitable uncertainty in securing employment prospects or seeking higher educational opportunities. Some parents and caregivers expressed concern over their children dropping out of school, depriving them of the chance to enter higher education. Amidst such restrictions, there is a higher risk for children to be vulnerable to sexual and other types of exploitation (Colombo Telegraph, 2022).

Concluding remarks

This opinion piece purported to identify the growing concerns about the impacts of the recent economic crisis on children in the schooling age in Sri Lanka and argue about possible responses. The concerns are about nutrition issues, learning loss and well-being of the children. In order to tackle the challenges as above, there needs to be a style of management and leadership to create mutually supportive climates in schools, inclusive of physical, cognitive and psychological development of the children based on secure and conducive environments. For this, the stakeholders, inclusive of children, teachers, school leaders and local communities, need to have mutual trust and support. This unprecedented crisis would require stronger concerted efforts for all the stakeholders to overcome it than ever.

To achieve this, the educational authorities and school leaders are responsible for creating such schools and classrooms (O’Toole and Simovska, 2021; Sato, 2012). As argued by Gunawardena and Kadirgamar (2022), if there are more democratic alternatives to the authoritarian state, encouraging schools to facilitate democratic education – associated ways of living (Dewey, 1916) – is a component of societal transformation. The education system is a part of state system in general – and the efforts should be made to target this particular segment of the state system. In other words, the efforts can and should be made to ensure the schools becoming more democratic – mutually appreciative of and listening to each other, for a better community. It may take some time for the political regime to become more democratic in various aspects. However, at the school levels, it would be easier to ensure democratic participation of the various stakeholders despite the differences in the backgrounds, or even opinions. At least, the schools can be, and as the authors believe should be, the sites where every stakeholder is respected, listened to and supported with each other. Democratisation of the school would strengthen coordination among the stakeholders to share necessary information and resources and to create better strategies to handle the issues resulting from the crisis. If this crisis turns out to be an opportunity, it will pave the way for children to create autonomous democratic learning communities.