The government developed the infrastructure required to make free education accessible to all. This process created a network of state run schools and an administrative structure that managed them. Although the state adopted measures to ensure a uniform standard among all schools, some qualitative disparities are clearly perceptible. The different standards in quality and uneven provision of facilities of schools can be ascribed to political, geographical or other factors and also due to certain measures adopted by the state itself. The government has framed regulations and specified criteria to ensure equity in resource allocation. However they have been found to be sorely inadequate to eliminate existing inequities. As a result of that some of the schools specially in remote areas do not have the basic infrastructural facilities. Owing to this situation teachers are reluctant to work in these schools and it further exaggerate the disparities in quality of the education. This is resulted in high ratio of dropped outs, irregular attendance and finally poor performance education attainments in the particular communities. With the 13 years of experience in the education sector CED has basically identified certain locations where communities underprivileged from quality education.
In this Youth Action Research CED anticipate to engaged the youth to identify the root causes pertaining to their communities with regard to education, mobilize local resources to address those issues whenever possible and internalize the capacities to utilize the provisions of the legal framework to protect their right to education. Thus CED expects to strength the capacities of the youth researchers and finding solutions in a participatory manner.
Accordingly, the main objectives of the YAR could be listed as follows
- Strengthen the youth participation of the CED network
- Develop the capacity of the youth as social mobilizers
- Promote ownership of the community in solving their problems and
- Provide sustainable solution to educational issues in the community
- Identify the issues related to their education
- Present the findings to the authorities
Engagement of the youth in social activities have been significantly reduced due to the existing social economic factors in the society and CED believe that this YAR would helped to youth to recognize their capacities and emphasize the important role that youth have to play to find solutions for issue related to education in their communities.
CED has made arrangement to implement this project in Rathnapura and Kaluthara Districts. The initial data gathering and building rapport with the community is in progress