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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
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21 September 2021

If an unpredictable or out of control disaster has taken place and hindered the routine processes, and no
action has been taken to counter the damage, the whole governing system can reach a definite

downfall. The same results can arise from the process of controlling disasters like infectious diseases.

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sri Lankan government imposed some strict rules, which include
curfew and time to time lockdown since 2020 for several times. The highly infectious novel

coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, is leading to a devastating illness which mandated island wide curfew to
mitigate the disease spread and the measures were not without an inevitable industrial and service

sector downfall. When managing disaster situations, education is a factor which is often overlooked
and poorly managed in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Be it the catastrophe caused by civil war, suicide

bombings or Easter bombings, or the infrastructure damage caused by a natural disaster, or even the

countermeasures taken to avoid pandemics like Covid-19, the final result was the closure of the
schools until the threats subside (Chandasiri, 2020; Ilankoon, Kisokanth and Warnakulasuriya, 2020;

Rameez, Fowsar and Lumna, 2020).

Existing Barriers for Containing School Education in a Disaster Situation

The main concern of education strategy development in any country is that the education system of the

country should allow the students to carry out their educational tasks with minimum effects from
external factors including a disaster situation. Furthermore, it is required to set up universal quality

control strategies across the country. In this Covid-19 induced situation also, the continuation of
educational activities is essential without the physical attendance of students in schools

(Liyanagunawardena and Williams, 2021). This could be done by integrating distance learning
techniques for the school education system. There are several barriers for integrating distance learning

techniques for the school education system as listed below (Gunawardene and Ranawana, 2019).

● Adoption of distance learning techniques is rarely seen in the Sri Lankan education system.

The few applications are mainly limited to universities. Because of the lack of experience
in such concepts, both students and teachers would have been hesitant at first to make use

of them.

● Lack of disaster management and disaster training knowledge within the syllabi.
● As illustrated in Table 1, television and e-learning media have their own limitations.

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