Cluster 16 of 28. Ideas 321 to 340
Education and the exam funnel
The mechanism
177,000 qualify every year and 45,000 get a state university place. The other 130,000 are a market only partly served, and the polytechnic is not a second choice when it leads to a job.
The 20 ideas
- 321Employer-owned technical colleges: the hotels train the chefs, the port trains the planners
- 322Apprenticeship brokers who match a firm to a student and handle the paperwork, for a fee from the firm
- 323Nursing colleges to the British and Australian standard, with the return clause built into the fees
- 324Electrician, plumber and welder certification centres whose certificates are recognised abroad
- 325English tutoring by video for the districts, at a price a family can pay, with a test at the end
- 326Tuition classes that publish their pass rates, so that parents can compare
- 327Coding clubs for schoolchildren in the districts, run by returning graduates
- 328Foreign-degree colleges in the east and the north, since almost all of them sit in Colombo
- 329Learning-support centres for children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties, with trained teachers and a published method
- 330Speech therapists and other specialists among Sri Lankans abroad, working by video with children at home who talk late or need extra support, each child with a trained helper here who does the daily practice, and the right registrations in place in both countries
- 331Mobile science laboratories that visit village schools on a timetable, so every A-Level science student does the practicals
- 332A scholarship fund run by an association of Sri Lankans abroad, with a condition: the degree, and 2 years at home after it
- 333Careers counselling as a business, since the families guess
- 334Adult education evenings in every town: a language, a trade, a skill, paid per course
- 335University short courses sold to the children of Sri Lankans abroad: a summer in Peradeniya
- 336Driving schools that prepare workers going abroad for the driving test of the country they are going to
- 337Maritime training for the ships of the world, since Colombo is on the lane and the cadets go anyway
- 338Aviation and cabin-crew training, which the Gulf airlines recruit for constantly
- 339Money-management courses for the worker going abroad, before departure, with the products for sending money home built in
- 340Teacher exchange: a Sri Lankan teacher a year in Britain, a British teacher a year here, arranged privately