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Plan to increase seats on campus

by Nadira Gunatilleke

The intake of students to universities is to be increased by more than 60 per cent within the next five years, Human Resources Development, Education and Cultural Affairs Minister Dr. Karunasena Kodithuwakku said yesterday.

He told the Daily News that plans are already under way to increase the annual university intake to 20,000 from the current 12,500. The Minister said the increase will be part of the planned reforms to solve various problems in the education sector.

According to Education Ministry sources, last year 200,000 students qualified for university education but only 12,500 students were admitted. Another 7,000 students who could not enter universities received higher education through various other institutions.

According to these statistics only about 20,000 students had received higher education while about 80,000 students who qualified for university education did not get a chance to receive higher education. At present there are about 25,000 unemployed graduates.

The Education Ministry has received Rs.2,000 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank to upgrade Information Technology and English education. These funds will be spent within the next eighteen months. At present there are about 23,000 English teachers in the country. The intake of the Colleges of Education has also been increased by 500 to meet the demand for teachers.

The Minister who stressed the importance of English as a link language said emphasis will be laid on teaching the language in schools as a means of building national unity. There is a severe shortage of English lecturers in the country and arrangements will be made to strengthen English Education programmes of the National Institute of Education (NIE) with the assistance of foreign lecturers. Steps have been taken to conduct non-conventional training programs in this connection within the next two years.

These programs will be funded by the ADB. Assistance will be obtained from Indian and Australian universities for this program to improve English education, the Minister added.

The Minister also said that there is an excess of over 6,080 Sinhala medium school teachers in schools. There is a severe shortage of Tamil medium teachers. A total of 3,000 Tamil medium teachers comprising 1,000 graduates and 2,000 Advanced Level qualified persons have been sent to the North-East this year. There is a Tamil medium teacher shortage in estates. About 2,000 Tamil medium teachers are required to meet the demand. This problem will also be solved soon, Dr. Kodithuwakku added.

Modern facilities will be provided within the next five years to 575 schools which have arts, science and commerce streams to reduce the demand for popular schools. Another 700 schools will be upgraded.

There were 400 vacancies at Royal College, Colombo for year one students last year. About 4,000 applications were received. This is a good example of the rat race among parents to admit their children to popular schools, the Minister said. This rat race makes children suffer and creates hatred and competition among them. Arrangements will be made soon to provide better facilities for other schools in order to minimise this competition", he added.

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