60,000 applications projected for Grade One in National Schools

by Manjula Fernando

The Education Ministry expects around 60,000 applications from Grade One entrants for the 238 national schools including about 50 popular schools this year.

A spokesman for the Ministry said they have already received 37,000 letters containing one or more applications for admission to national schools. They started to open them last Friday.

"We accept letters that bear the postage seal up to April 12 but the late ones will be rejected," the spokesman said, adding they were still receiving letters which got delayed during the long New Year holiday. The closing date for applications was on April 12.

"After sorting the applications manually, we would be making the selections on the computer and the preliminary list will be sent to schools for verification of documents," he said, emphasising that there will not be any interviews for parents and children at schools this year.

The total number of vacancies in the 50 popular schools and other national schools have not been made public yet but the spokesman said they would be strictly complying with the 40 students per class criteria this year.

The tentative selection list will be announced through newspapers and the Internet between June 15 to 30 after which parents can submit an appeal or an objection to the Education Ministry if the child was not selected to the school of their choice.

The Ministry is making arrangements to finalise admissions before the third school term and the final selection list is due by August first week.

The Education Ministry took charge of selecting Grade One entrants to national schools having Grade One classes from this year, following recent investigations which bared an outrageous money spinning racket linking principals of certain popular schools.

Already the Ministry has taken steps to interdict two principals of leading schools in Colombo and Kandy on illegal grade one admission charges and several other schools are still under investigation by the Presidential Investigation Unit.

Earlier, the Ministry was involved in preparing Grade One priority list for children of services personnel.