ICT educational performance of the secondary education system in Sri Lanka: 2015-2020 periodical analysis

Abstract

ICT is very important for developing all sectors of the world. The school education system plays an important role in the student’s future life and the improvement of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government provides free education for more than four million students through 10,162 schools. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this study is to identify the performance of school candidates in ICT subjects from the periods of 2015–2020. The objectives are to identify the computer literacy rate in Sri Lanka and performance in ordinary and advanced level examinations in ICT subjects. For analysis, the secondary sources of information were derived from the Department of Examination reports of Candidate Performance from 2015 to 2020 and various other secondary sources. This study adopts a quantitative research approach, and the data were analyzed with central tendency measures using SPSS. Only 35% of them have computer literacy, and 59.5% of them are receiving computer knowledge from schools and universities. In Sri Lanka, out of every five households, only one has an owned desktop or laptop computer. According to the analysis of the data, on average, 294,312 sit for the O/L examination, and 18.39% (Mean = 54,309) of them select ICT as an optional subject. 35.69% (Mean = 19,206) of them got an ‘A’ grade for that and 94.12% of them passed the subjects, while 5.87% of (Mean = 3188) students failed annually. In 2017, 50.13% of them got an ‘A’ grade for ICT, and 5447 students failed in 2020. Considering Advanced Level, on average, 222,291 sat for the A/L examination and 9.6% (Mean = 21,727) of them selected ICT as the main subject. 1.62% (Mean = 441) of them got an ‘A’ the grade for that and 69.33% of them passed the subjects, while 30.67% (Mean = 6,485) students failed annually. Specifically, only 65 students in 2017 and annually below 3% of them got an ‘A’ grade for ICT. 9,304 students failed in 2020 in this subject. The following factors have an impact on the students' declining performance trends. Such as poor ICT infrastructure of schools, specifically rural and estate areas, lack of teachers, opportunities and resources for learning, high cost of computer technology devices, poverty of livelihoods, and poor English language proficiency. Effective policy and institutional measures are vitally important to address these shortcomings and move towards the sustainable development of Sri Lanka via well-established technology.