Starter Kit. Idea 331 of 500. Cluster 16
Mobile science laboratories that visit village schools on a timetable, so every A-Level science student does the practicals
The mechanism, from the book
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 first step
Ask the science teachers at 3 village schools which A-Level practicals their students have never done, and why. Pack the equipment for 2 of those practicals into a van or a set of boxes, and run them at one school for a day with a trained teacher. Then ask the school, or its old pupils' association, whether they would pay for a visit every term. One school booking the next visit is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A village school, or its old pupils' association, that wants its A-Level science students to do the practicals the exam expects.
- What leaves today
- Students in village schools sit science exams without having done the practicals, and lose places to students in towns whose schools have the laboratories.
Ask first
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask which schools in the division have no working science laboratory of their own.
- Department of Motor Traffic. Ask what registration a vehicle fitted out as a laboratory needs.
Check before you spend
Each principal's written agreement to the timetable, safe storage of chemicals on the vehicle, and insurance for students doing practicals on board.
Find out these three numbers
- How many schools within a day's drive have no working laboratory?
- Who would pay for each visit: the school, parents or a sponsor?
- What does fitting out and running one vehicle cost a month?
A comparison from the book
The exam funnel. Chapter One
"Every rupee spent on tuition classes"
Families already pay to help children through A-Levels; proper practicals compete for that same money.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.