Mitigating Corruption in education sector project which was funded under the USDOS grant for Advancing Transparency and Accountability and Countering Corruption in Sri Lanka could be considered as new approach address the negative consequence encountered by specially the unprivileged parents of Sri Lanka. Corruption always creates an adverse impact on the community in general nevertheless the impact corruption on the poor and disadvantage segment of the community is comparatively high.
The government of Sri Lanka makes every effort to ensure accessibility to quality and equal education for all the children in Sri Lanka. However it is obvious that there are huge gaps in resource allocation which lead promote some segment of the government schools as Popular Schools. Parents make every effort to admit their springs to these popular schools and this situation provide a space to bribery and corruption. Although the government has framed regulations and specified criteria to ensure equity to all in school admissions it was found those measures are inadequate to eliminate existing inequities.
In this initiative CED attempt to address this issue by empowering the community by providing necessary knowledge and skills to mitigate corruption in the education sector. To empower the community CED utilized it’s member organization network which cover more than 18 districts of Sri Lanka.
CED trained 29 individuals as trainers and through them CED was able to reach 790 people and equip them with the skill and knowledge to fight against corruption. In addition CED utilized mass media to motivate public to act against corruption and to promote Corruption reporting hotline 1954 of the bribery commission. According to the statistics these messages would have reached 300000 across the island and CED received some positive feedback from the audience.
