A group of four students nominated by the Higher Education Ministry to partake in a scholarship programme for Medicine (MBBS) courses in Bangladesh have been allegedly left high and dry, purportedly due to a colossal mix up between the Bangladeshi authorities and the Higher Education Ministry.

Several local school students who completed their GCE A/Level exams in December 2006 responded to an advertisement in the Daily News of December 12, 2007 that called for applications to be submitted to the Higher Education Ministry.

The Daily News advertisement began: "The People’s Republic of Bangladesh has offered five seats to Sri Lankan students to follow MBBS or BDS courses at Government owned Medical and Dental Colleges for 2007/2008."

Interviews

After applications were submitted, interviews were conducted by the Higher Education Ministry, which announced its four selected candidates on December 18, 2007.

The selected primary nominees were asked on December 20 to pay a US$ 50 fee each by demand draft, to the Director, Medical Education and HMPD, DGHS Mohakali, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

They all met the requirements stated in the Daily News advertisement: "The minimum qualification for the courses in Bangladesh is GCE A/L not before 2006 with at least C grades for all subjects. Based on nominations made through an interview conducted by the Higher Education Ministry the final selections will be made by the Government of Bangladesh."

The applicants were warned by the Higher Education Ministry at the time that they applied for the Bangladeshi scholarship that the mere act of applying would disqualify them from applying for any other scholarships advertised by the ministry.

Some of the persons selected by the Higher Education Ministry had re-sat their A/Levels in 2007 and received their results on January 1, 2008. Three of the principal nominees withdrew their applications and chose to apply instead to Sri Lankan medical colleges. The remaining nominee, D.S. Attalage chose instead to resubmit her application with her 2007 results which were better than her 2006 results. Attalage requested that the Ministry of Higher Education forward her new results to the Bangladeshi authorities.

On January 14, the Bangladeshi High Commission extended the deadline for applications to January 21, in order to accommodate a new set of eligible students following the release of the 2007 GCE A/Level results.

Eligible applicants were called for an interview on January 28, to be conducted by a panel of professionals chosen by the Higher Education Ministry. The interviews were attended by around 40 students. The next day on January 29, the Ministry of Higher Education announced that four new candidates had been selected along with initial selectee D.S. Attalage, and also announced the names of four reserve selectees.

Four selected

The four students selected in the January interview were D.S. Attalage, K.S. Gamage, T. Shashanthan, A.P.K. Jayasuriya and B.D.S.C. Fernando. The ministry’s four reserve nominees were S.D.K Liyanage, T.P. Costa, A. Darshani and M. Visvakumar.

The new nominees were also called upon on January 30, to pay the US$ fee by demand draft to the Bangladeshi authorities as with the group selected in December.

The Higher Education Ministry facilitated their applications and sent them to the Bangladeshi authorities along with their GCE O and A Level certificates. All of the nominated students were asked to sign a waiver from their eligibility to attend Sri Lankan universities once they were taken into the Bangladeshi programme, which they happily did.

Anxious wait

After waiting anxiously for over two months with no word from the Bangladeshi authorities, the nominees received a double shock of their lives. Firstly, it was revealed that only two Sri Lankans had been chosen by the Bangladeshi government for the scholarship programme.

Secondly, it was revealed that neither of them were nominees of the Higher Education Ministry. The two selected students, Danushi Mendis and Arfath Mohomed were not even interviewed by the Higher Education Ministry and had somehow been selected bypassing the ministry entirely.

The perplexed principal nominees went to the Higher Education Ministry in desperation and met Additional Secretary Malini Peiris, who wrote a letter to the Foreign Ministry asking that they speak to the Bangladeshi High Commission in Sri Lanka to facilitate the granting of places to their five principal nominees.

The letter was dated March 17. Since no action was taken the grief stricken nominees have written appeals to everyone from the president to the prime minister asking that action be taken to help them.

After the story was published on a local news website alleging that the Bangladeshi High Commissioner was behind a "scam" to place two of his preferred students into the scholarship programme to the detriment of the students nominated by the Higher Education Ministry, the Bangladeshi High Commission in Sri Lanka issued a statement (see box) stating their side of the story.

According to the High Commission, their deadline for applications to the programme was December 10. However, the programme was only advertised by the Higher Education Ministry two days after the deadline in the Daily News of December 12.

According to the statement, the Bangladeshi government only received one name from the Higher Education Ministry, presumably that of D.S. Attalage, in January 2008. This was despite the fact that Attalage was informed of her nomination on December 18 by the ministry, and that she paid her US$ 50 deposit to the Bangladeshi authorities on December 20 via bank draft.

The remaining names, the statement says, were received by the Bangladeshi High Commission only in February 2008. The final bit of icing on the cake in the Bangladeshi statement was a quote from the programme’s admission criteria, which, according to the High Commission, disqualified most or all of the ministry nominees.

According to the criteria, students should have completed their O/Levels in or after 2004, and their A/Levels in or after 2006. Anyone familiar with the Sri Lankan education system — and we pray for the sake of all children that the Higher Education Ministry is familiar with the system — should have realised that this criterion makes it impossible for most Sri Lankan students to be considered.

Students in Sri Lankan government schools generally sit for their A/Level examinations three years after they have sat their O/Levels. So a child who sat his A/Levels in 2006 would most likely have sat their O /Levels in 2003, barring them from the admissions process of the Bangladeshi programme.

This particular Bangladeshi scholarship programme has been in operation for many years and it is absolutely bamboozling that the Higher Education Ministry would be able to mess up the programme for students in such right royal style.

As if advertising the programme two days after the application deadline was not bad enough, to then skip over the admissions criteria and not realise the loophole for most Sri Lankan students is absolutely inexcusable.

If the ministry had been prudent enough to scrutinise the admission criteria before calling for applications, they may have been in a position to raise the matter with the Bangladeshi authorities and appeal for an exception to the criteria for Sri Lankan students, given the automatic disqualification presented by our education system.

Now however, four full months after the programme’s application deadline has expired, is hardly the time to ask the Bangladeshis to amend their criteria for Sri Lanka — especially after moves to palm the blame off on to them.

We can only hope that the authorities get off their high horse, come clean and take some action to assist the bright children who placed their faith in the system, and whose futures have been left uncertain thanks to that faith.

box

The High Commission hereby provides the clarification with regard to admission of Sri Lankan students in the Bangladesh Government Medical/Dental Colleges for the session 2007-2008 under Self Finance Scheme.

Bangladesh and Sri Lanka maintain extremely friendly relations which are deeply rooted between the governments and also between the peoples of the two neighbouring countries. This year Bangladesh Government reserved seven seats for Sri Lankan students under the said scheme. Three students were to be nominated by the High Commission and four were to be nominated by the Sri Lankan authorities. The High Commission on its own good gesture offered five nominations to the Sri Lankan authorities and kept only two to be nominated by the Mission.

Only one nomination was received from the Sri Lankan authority (The Ministry of Higher Education) in January 2008 after the deadline of December 10, 2007 set by Bangladesh Government. The High Commission forwarded the nomination with a request to the authorities in Bangladesh to accept the delayed application.

After one month in February 2008 the Ministry of Higher Education of Sri Lanka sent a list of more four principal nominees and also a list of four reserve nominees to be accepted in case of disqualification of the principal nominees. The High Commission immediately forwarded the applications as received again requesting the Bangladesh authorities to consider the delayed applications.

The admission authorities in Bangladesh on the basis of priority examined all the applications forwarded (five principal nominees and four reserved nominees of the Sri Lankan authority and two principal nominees and two reserved nominees of the High Commission) and found that none of the nominees of the Sri Lankan authority except one in the reserved list could fulfil the admission criteria (copy enclosed).

Sub paragraph (4) of the Criteria and Procedure for Admission stipulates "Applicants must have passed Secondary School Certificate or equivalent examination not before 2004 and Higher Secondary Certificate or equivalent examination not before 2006." It may be mentioned that the Criteria and Procedure for Admission was provided to the Sri Lankan authorities by the Mission right at the start of the process. As per the prevailing rules and regulations for the said admission, there is no scope for accommodating applicants who do not conform to the stipulated admission criteria. As such admission was granted to the applicants who fulfilled the admission criteria.

With a view to utilising the maximum seats earmarked for Sri Lanka, the concerned authorities of Bangladesh granted admission to one qualified nominee of Sri Lankan authorities, two nominees of the High Commission and one nominee from the reserve list. Altogether four out of seven are now allowed admission by the Government of Bangladesh.