Sri Lanka’s education system is in crisis and the tuition industry keeps an ailing system’s wheels turning. Yet, whether the future of education should rest in the hands of a shadow system remains a question.

Rashini from Deraniyagala entered a school in Colombo to do her Advanced Level exams in the Science stream in 2020. What she learnt when she came to Colombo was that her school teachers paid little attention to teaching. They were confident that the students would attend tuition classes and learn all they had to for exams. 

When Covid-19 came, Rashini had to go home. The internet connectivity in Deraniyagala was poor and she did not have a strong enough internet connection to follow all her classes online. With only a little time to prepare for exams after returning to Colombo post-Covid, Rashini switched from Science to Commerce. 

A powerful player

A lecturer from the University of Colombo told The Sunday Morning that some students who had entered the university from Anuradhapura felt that they had only managed to do so because they had attended private tuition in Colombo. 

From school teachers relying on students to find their way through the support of private tutors to students making decisions about their education based on the availability of tuition, this reportedly Rs. 16 billion industry is viewed as one of the most powerful players in the education sector. 

Well-known Chemistry teacher Charitha Dissanayake told The Sunday Morning that he had once been told by a university academic that the tuition industry was what ensured that the youth of today sat for their Advanced Level exams. 

“These students are doing their A/Levels because of your advertisements,” he claimed a lecturer from a State university had said to him.

Although he is an Executive Committee member of the All-Island Professional Lecturers’ Association (APLA), Dissanayake spoke to The Sunday Morning as a private individual who was a tuition teacher. He said that, in principle, he was not against reforms in education that might eventually do away with the tuition industry. 

“The fact is that the tuition industry exists because of a problem within the education system. If that issue is resolved and the industry is eventually eliminated, there is nothing we can do about it,” he said.

He further claimed that he had learnt from the Government that there were plans to introduce reforms to allow such a gradual change. 

A need for reform

There are instances where students face challenges when they enter university as the material they learn in university is conceptual. In addition, students who enter university through this system are not strong in their conceptual knowledge.

Recently, a case involving a student being allegedly caned by a teacher was shared on the internet. This was followed by a more recent Facebook advertisement for an A/Level paper class which claimed that it would “brutally mass rape 50 papers.” 

The topic of regulating the tuition industry is one that is in the process of being debated. When questioned, Dissanayake said that there should be certain minimum facilities a student should receive in order to ensure they were comfortable while attending long classes. Adequate hall space, hygienic lavatory facilities, and facilities to purchase food were among them. 

Furthermore, he said that in addition to knowledge of the subject they taught, teachers should also possess an understanding of child psychology. “We don’t just teach them a subject, we also teach them about life,” he added.

Dissanayake’s website quotes a student who said that more than the subject matter, which he would not talk about because it went without saying, what he valued most was all he had learnt from him about life. 

He warned that while all teachers might teach their students what they believed to be correct, such teachings might not necessarily be facts that everyone agreed with unanimously. 

Several tuition teachers have emerged as controversial figures on social media due to their expressions that have allegedly promoted ethno-religious divisions and misogyny. 

For Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) General Secretary Joseph Stalin, regulations are out of the question as they are likely to lead to the formalisation of a sector that he identified as a “mafia.” 

“The tuition industry is so powerful that they are in Parliament making decisions about the country. We are against any decision to regulate that system; it should be abolished,” he asserted.

To Stalin, abolishing the tuition sector means reforming the examination system. The present education system is structured around three exams: the Grade 5 Scholarship, O/Levels, and A/Levels. Although successive governments, including the present one, have been claiming to bring in education reforms, he noted that there would be no resolution to the education sector’s crisis until such changes were made. 

To Dissanayake, the exam-oriented ways of the tuition industry pose a problem. He said that although students were likely to perform well at exams and would be, for instance, capable of solving a mathematical problem, they would lack conceptual knowledge – the kind of knowledge that might be expected at the undergraduate level. 

Govt. intervention

In 2023, it was reported that then State Minister of Higher Education Suren Raghavan had proposed a criterion for regulating the industry in discussion with the APLA. Posting on its Facebook page, the APLA said that the definition of who a tuition teacher was, their qualifications, standards of their institutions, fees, and ethical teaching practices had been deliberated amongst areas that required further discussion. 

It was reported that a circular issued in December 2024, signed by the Secretary of the Ministry of Education of the Western Province, banning school teachers from conducting private classes for their students from school had been suspended upon the intervention of Minister of Labour Mahinda Jayasinghe. As reported, the suspension was to be in effect until the circular was reviewed and a policy decision was made at the Central Government level.

Western Province Chief Secretary Dhammika Wijesinghe told The Sunday Morning that a meeting had been held with all provinces and that a policy decision had been requested from the Ministry of Education as the regulation should be uniform in all provinces. 

“Four provinces are practising it already; the Southern Province is already taking disciplinary action based on these grounds,” she said. 

Meanwhile, CTU General Secretary Stalin expressed his belief that the policy prohibiting school teachers from conducting private tuition classes for their students was a necessary one, claiming however that it was practised only by a “very few” teachers.