Rewarding Successes in Peer Learning
Excerpts from a 10-page online work-study report(pdf) prepared by Horizon Lanka students with faculty editing
Lancaster System Compared to Horizon Lanka Academy
"The Horizon school of Mahavilachchiya has much resemblance to The Lancastrian School. The public education has failed to cater to the demands of the existing job market. The then society in England according to Lancaster and other writers, had generated spiritless incapable graduates. Similarly in Sri Lanka most of the graduates who passed out from the local universities lag behind in the job market waiting for jobs or launch various sort of protest campaigns to press the government to provide them with jobs. The private organizations have job opportunities, but the graduates who pasout from our universities do not have the qualifications that these private firms ask for. Secondly, the discrimination in the distribution of resources in the public school system in Sri Lanka offers the step mother’s treatment to schools in rural areas and the students whoeven fail the GCE O/L and A/L in reputed Government schools easily get their own quota of job opportunities in the private arena because they have the ability to work in English, the computer literacy and the extra curricular talents that an executiveof a business world should have. This discrimination has resulted from the non availability of teachers for Mathematics and English and Science. Further there is a lack or no facilities in rural government school for Information Technology in rural schools. This has also generated the class barrier in Sri Lankan society...
"There is a big rush for computer practical lessons at present. Hence we suggest the following are some of the activities.
- Forming provincial study circles in different locations with in Mahavilachchiya to teach Computer skills and English.
- Forming Study Circles to help weaker students in a given location.
- Forming Research units to do small scale research offered by Openworld.
- Forming Study Circles to Teach English and Computer skills to new students.
"Further we suggest that the students who successfully get the mastery in the prescribed areas can be promoted to assistant monitors to assist the monitor who is the centre manager cum teacher and they can be offered a scholarship through Horizon Lanka’s Microscholarships project. The monitor who successfully trains in the areas identified below, the students assigned to him too can be rewarded."
The full study is downloadable here.