By Mohamed Harees –

Lukman Harees

The Sirimavo Balika Colours Night incident

A young squash champion taking the microphone at Colours Night in one of Colombo’s most prestigious girls’ schools has ripped the veil off a system of quiet ‘corruption’, injustice,  arbitrary power and humiliation that many Sri Lankan students have endured for years. Her courage is a reminder that what is broken is not one ceremony or one principle, but an entire culture in big schools and sports, where reputation is protected, and children are sacrificed.​

At Sirimavo Bandaranaike Balika Vidyalaya, Colombo 7, a student athlete, V.S. Chanithma Senali who has represented Sri Lanka at the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games and other international squash events, was not given the top sports award she and many others expected her to receive at the school’s Colours Night in December 2025. In a moment that has now gone viral, she stepped up to the microphone in front of parents, staff, guests and students, calmly explained the background around the denial of the award. According to her own public statement on stage, the principal refused her award because she reportedly had not attended rehearsals for the ceremony, absences that were linked to her training and competition schedule as an elite national athlete.​ The video exploded across social media, split public opinion, and forced the Ministry of Education to request a report from the principal, while the Old Girls’ Association called for a fair, expert-led inquiry into the selection process and criteria.​​

The school’s subsequent statement framed her on-stage protest as damaging to “discipline” and the institution’s reputation, and suggested she had received other awards, arguing that the main title went to another athlete who allegedly better met the formal criteria. This response has been widely read as emblematic of a broader pattern in Sri Lankan school sports: administrators prioritising control and image over fairness, transparent criteria and the mental well-being of high-performing student athletes, thereby deepening a sense of systemic injustice in sports.

The incident also highlights how rigid, discipline-based requirements (such as compulsory rehearsal attendance) can be used to override merit in school sports recognition, especially for outstanding athletes whose schedules include national-level training and competitions beyond the school’s control. Commentators have criticised this as a serious injustice: a student who brought international glory to Sri Lanka and to her school was effectively punished or downgraded because she could not conform to a procedural formality, rather than being supported and accommodated.

What this reveals about “big school” culture

This was not simply a clash over discipline versus merit; it exposed how power works in Sri Lanka’s elite schools. These institutions pride themselves on discipline, tradition, and reputation, yet too often they operate like small fiefdoms in which the Principal and a few senior teachers wield near-total discretion over honours, punishments, and opportunities. When decisions are opaque, students and parents are left to guess whether outcomes are based on genuine rules, personal likes and dislikes, or the desire to send a message to anyone who dares to challenge authority.​

In this environment, “discipline” can become a weapon instead of a shared value. Attendance at rehearsals or obedience to arbitrary instructions is treated as more important than years of hard training, national representation, or the student’s actual contribution to the school’s name. Elite athletes balancing school with intensive training and international travel are judged against standards designed for ordinary cocurricular activities, with no flexibility, no clear exceptions, and no transparent appeal process.​

Corruption and injustice in school sports

The controversy at Sirimavo sits on top of a much wider pattern of unfairness in Sri Lankan sports, from school level right up to national federations. Reports on national sports bodies describe entrenched corruption, nontransparent selection criteria, and officials using positions for personal gain, including allegations of bribery, misuse of public funds and the inclusion of foreign athletes with dubious eligibility into Sri Lankan teams. Parents and athletes have documented how opaque “selection committees” pick favourites, ignore performance data, and treat protests as personal attacks rather than as calls for accountability.​ In fact, there was also yet another instance of a former national Squash champion, young Ms Issadeen, pointing out institutional apathy for her complaint of mistreatment.   

School sports culture is deeply entangled with this system. Big schools are gateways to national teams, and school masters, old boys’/girls’ networks and outside coaches often hold decisive influence over who gets noticed, who gets promoted, and who is quietly shut out. In such a setting, merit can be overridden by personal loyalty and connections; students from less “connected” families are disadvantaged, no matter how hard they train and refereeing controversies, biased disciplinary actions and selective enforcement of rules become normalised as “part of the game”.​

When a student like Chanithma publicly calls this out, she is not only challenging one decision; she is shining a light on a hierarchy in which adult reputations and institutional pride consistently trump fairness to young people and students.​

How injustice is normalised in schools

Several structural features of Sri Lankan schooling create fertile ground for this kind of injustice. Firstly, concentrated power in Principals who are granted wide discretion over awards, disciplinary actions and the interpretation of ministry circulars, with weak oversight in practice. Even when the Ministry demands a report, as in the Sirimavo case, this usually happens only after a public outcry, and the process remains largely closed to students and parents.​ Secondly, a lack of clear, public criteria; many schools do not publish detailed, sportspecific criteria for Colours, Best Sportsman/Sportswoman awards and special honours, nor do they explain how non-sporting factors like “discipline” and “attendance at rehearsals” will be weighed. Without published rules and a known right of appeal, decisions feel arbitrary and can easily be manipulated.​ Thirdly, the culture of fear and silence where students learn early that “complaining” risks being labelled disobedient, ungrateful, or “a troublemaker”, affecting prefect appointments, leadership positions, and university testimonials. Parents often stay silent to avoid retaliation against their children, and teachers fear that challenging the principal will harm their careers.​Lastly, weaponising “reputation”; when controversies arise, schools and authorities frequently frame criticism as an attack on the institution’s reputation, rather than as legitimate demands for accountability. In the Sirimavo case, the school community’s statement emphasised damage to the school’s name, while the deeper questions of fairness and criteria remained unresolved in public.​

This is how everyday injustices—biased selections, unfair punishments, public humiliations—become normalised as “discipline” or “tradition” rather than recognised as forms of institutional abuse.

The emotional cost to students

The impact of such a system on young people goes far beyond a missed trophy. These student athletes invest years of work and sacrifice, often training before school, after school and during holidays, carrying the flag for both school and country on international stages. To be sidelined at the moment of recognition for a technicality or an unexplained decision sends a brutal message: you are valuable only as long as you are obedient, not because of who you are or what you have achieved.​ Psychologically, this breeds: deep disillusionment with authority and institutions, a sense of humiliation and betrayal, especially when injustices occur in public ceremonies and pressure to internalise unfair treatment as “normal” to survive the system.​​

Only some students, like Chanithma, respond with public protest and withdrawal from the school. Others quietly give up on sports or leadership roles, or carry resentment and mistrust into their adult lives, shaping how they later view the state, law and politics. When entire generations learn that speaking out is punished and silence is rewarded, it lays the groundwork for wider societal impunity.​

Why this system must be dismantled!

The problem is not a few “bad” principals or coaches. It is a structurally unjust system that concentrates power, lacks transparent rules and review, protects image over young people’s dignity and reproduces wider patterns of corruption seen in national sports and politics.​ These awards and sports positions are not just decorations; they shape access to scholarships, university places and social networks that define future opportunities. When those are distributed unfairly, schools become engines of inequality rather than spaces of learning and character formation.​ Dismantling this system means more than issuing new circulars or holding “discipline” workshops. It requires a fundamental shift towards student-centred governance, rights-based education and genuine accountability.

What must change in schools and sports?

Several concrete reforms are urgently needed if Sri Lanka is to move away from arbitrary, personality-driven control towards justice and fairness in schools and sports such as 1. . Publish criteria and procedures for Colours, Best Sportsman/Sportswoman and other major awards, including how performance, discipline and participation are weighed. 2. Independent appeals and review, 3. childrights and athlete-centred policies 4. the Ministry of Sports and Ministry of Education should jointly regulate the relationship between schools and national sports federations, and 5. protecting whistleblowers and student speech. Students who raise concerns must be protected from retaliation and victimisation. Clear guidelines should instruct schools that criticism, even if uncomfortable, is part of a healthy educational environment, not grounds for punishment.​

A new ethic: schools as spaces of justice

The viral Sirimavo incident has forced the country to confront an uncomfortable question: what kind of citizens are being formed in schools where injustice is taught by example? When a child stands on a stage and calmly declares that she has been wronged, the real test for the system is not whether it can silence her, but whether it can listen, learn and change.​​ This controversy has exposed more than one flawed decision; it has unmasked a culture in which image and obedience routinely outweigh fairness, transparency and the dignity of young athletes. The courage of a single student to speak into a microphone has opened a window for the country to re-examine how power is exercised in schools, how merit is recognised, and how children are taught to accept or resist injustice.

Whether this moment becomes just another socialmedia storm or the beginning of real reform will depend on how principals, ministries, alumni and parents respond now—by defending the old order, or by choosing to build school and sports systems that are worthy of the trust and talent of the next generation. The system of corruption and injustice in big schools and sports will not collapse on its own. It will be dismantled when students, parents, alumni, educators and policymakers act decisively.