In the early hours of 27 September 2012, student leaders Janaka Bandara, known as Mathalan, and Sisitha Priyankara, known as Tokka, were travelling on a motorcycle along the Kandy Road in Imbulgoda, Gampaha. They were on the ground, collecting handouts and pasting posters to build public support for a protest march approaching Colombo. They were killed in a suspicious accident.
The march began in Kandy on 24 September and was scheduled to reach the capital on 28 September. The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) was on strike, demanding that 6% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) be allocated to State education. The Inter-University Students’ Federation (IUSF) backed the campaign and organised the multi-day march.
Fourteen years later, the figure remains unmet and unavoidable for successive governments.
Where the number came from
The demand for 6% is not arbitrary. It stems from long-standing international recommendations, including frameworks advanced by UNESCO and global education forums such as the Incheon Declaration, which urge developing countries to allocate 4–6% of GDP, or 15–20% of public expenditure, to education.
In Sri Lanka, the figure became a rallying cry for trade unions, most notably during the FUTA strikes of 2012, and was sustained by school teacher unions such as the Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU). It moved from a policy recommendation to a political litmus test, put to every government in every election cycle.
The ledger
Historically, Sri Lanka’s public spending on education has hovered between 1.5% and 2.5% of GDP. Over the last decade it has fluctuated, reaching a relative peak of about 3.2% to 3.4% around 2016 and falling to about 1.2% at the height of the economic crisis in 2022. Recent budgets have nudged it back up, to around 1.8% to just over 2%, which authorities frame as a hard-fought step given severe fiscal constraints.
The figures for recent years are as follows. From 2023 to 2025, allocations ranged between Rs. 350 billion and more than Rs. 500 billion across successive transitional budgets, equivalent to 1.8–1.9% of GDP. This was the post-crisis stabilisation phase after the 2022 economic collapse, when public spending was bound by primary expenditure caps that kept total primary expenditure under 13% of GDP under the public financial management framework.
In 2026, the total consolidated State allocation was Rs. 704 billion, or about 2.04% of GDP. The administration framed this as a historic nominal high.
For 2027, Rs. 328 billion has been allocated for education, higher education, and vocational education – about 2% of GDP. This is a 9% increase from Rs. 301 billion in the previous year’s direct ministerial and sector votes, within total Government expenditure ceilings of roughly Rs. 4.99 trillion.
Govt. position
The 6% promise has followed the present administration into office. During last year’s budget debate, Prime Minister and Education Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya rejected allegations that the Government had pledged to provide 6% to the education sector in its first year. She said no such promise had been made, as new policies needed to be implemented to strengthen education institutions.
“We never said we would give 6% in the first year. There are some fellow members here who have been with us since 2012, calling for education changes; even then, we never said that 6% should be given at once,” she said.
She pointed out that funding alone would not resolve the sector’s problems and that policy change was required. She added that the 2026 allocation was the highest in recent years. “This year, 2.04% has been allocated, the highest since the past years,” she said.
Her remarks were a response to questions in Parliament about her participation, as a lecturer, in the 2012 protest for 6% funding.
The fiscal ceiling
Economists point to Sri Lanka’s chronically low tax-to-GDP ratio as the root of the problem. Because the national revenue ‘pie’ has historically been small, raising education spending to 6% would consume a large share of total Government revenue, forcing trade-offs against health, debt servicing, and national security.
Under the ongoing economic recovery programme and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) framework, primary expenditure caps tightly regulate spending. Policy analysts say reaching 6% in a single step is structurally impossible without a sharp rise in State revenue or a major debt restructuring.
Money allocated, money unspent
Public finance analyses by organisations such as Verité Research, as well as findings of the National Audit Office (NAO), have repeatedly highlighted another hurdle: actual expenditure consistently lags approved budget estimates.
Capital allocations earmarked for school development, laboratory upgrades, and regional infrastructure frequently go under-utilised. When administrative bottlenecks and rigid procurement guidelines stall projects, capital votes remain unspent at year-end and lapse back into the Treasury.
The NAO’s latest report shows that more than Rs. 351 billion allocated to the Ministry of Education, Higher Education, and Vocational Education went unspent in 2024. Some 32% of capital allocations, amounting to Rs. 163.8 billion, and 15% of recurrent allocations, amounting to Rs. 187.8 billion, were left unused.
Auditors noted that funds had been requested without proper forecasting or a sound rationale, leading to wasteful estimates. As a result, allocations under 36 expenditure heads, totalling Rs. 37.4 billion, were left untouched, 32 of them capital expenditure items.
Unions’ response
FUTA says the demand remains an active priority. Its Secretary Charudaththe Illangasinghe said that the federation did not expect the Government to deliver 6% overnight. Instead, it wants an explicit six- to seven-year roadmap that raises spending in stages, such as to 3% this year and 4% the next. He warned that continued underfunding was pushing the public education system towards structural collapse.
Illangasinghe pointed first to the university system, where admissions had grown while academic staffing had fallen.
“In 2015, university admissions stood at around 25,000 students per year; today, that number has nearly doubled to approximately 45,000. However, the academic cadre has moved in the opposite direction. In 2015, there were around 5,800 academics, which grew to about 6,000 by 2022. But due to mass brain drain over recent years, only about 5,200 academics remain in the entire system today.
“To maintain quality education and a proper student-to-staff ratio for the current student population, the system needs at least 12,000 academics. Yet we have barely 5,200, less than half. The primary prerequisite to solving this and hiring qualified staff is substantially increasing education funding.”
Laboratories and facilities designed in 2015 for five students now have to accommodate 25 at a time, which he said overwhelmed staff workloads, delayed academic years, and threatened international recognition.
Illangasinghe said that the shortage was tied to pay and to the loss of benefits that once drew graduates into academia. “We used to recruit the top tier, those with first classes and postgraduate qualifications. Today, such talent does not enter the State system because far better opportunities exist outside. Worse, existing support systems have been stripped away.”
He added: “Previously, academics received vehicle permits, which at least gave an incentive once in a lifetime to enter the university system. Today, those permits cannot even be used to import vehicles. Other Government servants receive property loans to build a home, but for university academics, that has been stopped under this administration without any given reason.
“On top of low salaries, when the 36% tax bracket hit in 2023, nearly 99% of senior professors and lecturers were already servicing 20- to 25-year bank loans for housing or vehicles, often amounting to up to 40% of their gross pay. The new tax wiped out their remaining living allowances for food, medicine, and schooling, pushing many salaries into negative net figures. That financial impossibility drove senior professors out of the country.”
Illangasinghe added that lecturers must pay out of pocket for travel fuel and mobile data for online lectures during crises, and that administrative concessions, such as securing school admissions for the children of lecturers who relocated across districts, had been abolished.
He said the demand was equally critical for general schooling. “We talk about high-level curriculum reforms, but they are meaningless if fundamental infrastructure is ignored. Even in Colombo, schools lack proper facilities to study. Across Sri Lanka, there are schools without drinking water, and schools where an entire student body shares a single washroom.
“In rural areas, schools survive only because impoverished parents pool their own money to buy paint and maintain the buildings. Instead of vanity projects like declaring ‘smart classrooms’ for political gain, real education spending must ensure foundational sanitation, buildings, laboratories, and proper teacher development,” he said.
The Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU) has also raised similar concerns about the condition of school facilities.
Illangasinghe further stated that the size of the allocation was only part of the picture and that how the money was spent mattered as much as how much was set aside.
He said that Sri Lanka’s high national literacy rates masked wide disparities between schools. Popular urban schools, such as those in Colombo, stay afloat through powerful past pupils’ associations and heavy parental contributions. Small rural and estate sector schools, by contrast, face teacher shortages in critical subjects such as Mathematics, Science, and English, crumbling infrastructure, and a lack of digital resources.
Illangasinghe said that better teacher deployment and administrative transparency would resolve many classroom problems well before spending reached 6% of GDP.
He also pointed to those currently in government who were part of the 2012 campaign.
“Many of those who currently sit in Parliament and the Cabinet were at the very forefront of our 2012 FUTA campaign demanding 6%. They know these systemic crises intimately without needing an explanation. Yet, there is no plan, no Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and no roadmap to reach 4%, let alone 6%.
“Simply repeating slogans on stages is meaningless. The Government must place a transparent, time-bound financial commitment before the public.”