14
The Challenge of Youth Employment in Sri Lanka
In particular, educational outcomes must be improved for poor and excluded children and youth. To that end, more resources should be allocated to schools in poor and rural areas, so that they have the teachers, materials, and facilities necessary to educate children. Development of an incentive scheme that can draw more qualified teachers into disadvantaged areas should be considered, with the goal of increasing participation of children in school and reducing dropouts. Innovative approaches to tailoring schooling and training to the needs of school dropouts or children who work may also be needed (for example, conditional cash transfer payments to keep children ages 11–14 in school). Although most school curriculums include English language teaching, the quality of instruction is often poor and should be improved to give Sri Lankan youth not only a marketable skill but a measure of social inclusion. The education syllabuses currently include Sinhala as a subject for Tamil students and vice versa. But teaching methods need to be modernized, to emphasize communication and to include audio and video equipment, not just blackboard-based teaching. Broader knowledge of the Sinhala and Tamil languages can promote ethnic harmony through greater appreciation of each ethnic group’s literature, lyrics, films, and drama—even jokes and cartoons. Information technology and basic business and economics are also subjects that could be more widely taught in school. Employment prospects for youth can also be improved by strengthened job counseling in school and by improved and more widely disseminated information about the labor market and available jobs. Such counseling and information could help better align youth aspirations with opportunities in the labor market by guiding youth away from careers in areas either where there are few openings or where their skills do not match those required by the career. Improved vocational training programs will be key to better aligning job aspirations with the job market. Promoting private sector participation in planning and conducting training programs and establishing a self-regulating mechanism through an association to standardize training programs can improve their quality and the relevance of the training. Training programs should be voucher-based and demand driven (through revitalizing the Skills Development Fund, for example), with subsidies for the youth in disadvantaged settings. Relaxation of eligibility restrictions on enrollment should be reconsidered with the aim of reaching the least educated youth. The portfolio of technical education and vocational programs should be expanded to include short-term courses, and the number of courses