Policy of Standardization - The Effect of The Law

The Effect of The Law

30% of university places were allocated on the basis of island-wide merit; half the places were allocated on the basis of comparative scores within districts and an additional 15% reserved for students from under privileged districts.

In 1969, the Northern Province, which was largely populated by Tamils and comprised 7% of the population of the country, provided 27.5 percent of the entrants to science based courses in Sri Lankan universities. By 1974, this was reduced to 7%. However, the hardest hit population group were the urban Tamils and Sinhalese in the Western Province, which contained 26% of the islands population. In 1969, the Western Province provided 67.5 percent of admissions to science based courses. This reduced to 27% in 1974, after the law came into effect. The majority of the share enjoyed by Jaffna Tamils were distributed among Tamils in other areas ( Eastern province, Hill country and Muslims) . Majority of the share enjoyed by Colombo was distributed among rest of the Sinhalese.

"In 1971, a system of standardisation of marks was introduced for admissions to the universities, obviously directed against Tamil-medium students (referred to earlier). K.M. de Silva describes it as follows:

'The qualifying mark for admission to the medical faculties was 250 (out of 400) for Tamil students, whereas it was only 229 for the Sinhalese. Worse still, this same pattern of a lower qualifying mark applied even when Sinhalese and Tamil students sat for the examination in English. In short, students sitting for examinations in the same language, but belonging to two ethnic groups, had different qualifying marks.'

He observes that by doing this in such an obviously discriminatory way, 'the United Front Government of the 1970s caused enormous harm to ethnic relations.'

This was not the end; in 1972 the 'district quota system' was introduced, again to the detriment of the Sri Lankan Tamil people. The (Sinhalese) historian C.R. de Silva wrote:

'By 1977 the issue of university admissions had become a focal point of the conflict between the government and Tamil leaders. Tamil youth, embittered by what they considered discrimination against them, formed the radical wing of the Tamil United Liberation Front. Many advocated the use of violence to establish a separate Tamil state of Eelam. It was an object lesson of how inept policy measures and insensitivity to minority interests can exacerbate ethnic tensions .'