New vistas in education soon - Education Minister

Rasika Somarathna

COLOMBO: Education Minister Susil Premajayantha underscored that education would be the cornerstone in the vision forward for Sri Lanka, to prepare the country to new changes that will incorporate new attitudes and standards in socio-economic spheres.

Addressing a press gathering at the Education Ministry yesterday to announce the Ministry's way forward, the Minister emphasised the need to build on the achievements during the past months.

"The field of education is not static and is constantly evolving. Syllabuses and curricula need to be constantly updated to stay in-line with current developments in the world. We have to ensure that students are properly prepared to face the challenges of employment, and life in society," Premajayantha said.

The authority on admissions has been given back to school heads. The admissions are been done according to a scoring system and already a circular has been issued to this effect.

According to the Minister no one would be able to interfere, as a process has been established to verify all the details which are being presented. The provincial authorities has been entrusted with decision making in the relevant areas.

A decision has been taken by the Ministry to consider only the first choice in admissions. Model schools are to be established in some chosen towns as an answer to the congestion in major schools. The admission of students to intermediary classes too have been stopped, barring some emergency appeals.

According to the Minister the problem pertaining to last year's chemistry paper had been solved. Accordingly 995 new students had been admitted to Universities. Steps have been initiated to do the corrections in the future exams, both manually and by using computers to eradicate any mistakes.

Describing the way forward the Minister said: "The Government is spending R.700 million on the nutrition programme. We intend to extend this further. Also steps have been taken to issue free Uniform materials and books."

According to the Minister steps have been already taken to build eight new Teacher Training Centres. The ruling on teacher transfers prohibiting transfers from a National school to a provincial school is to be abandoned. Cluster housing projects are also in the pipeline to address the issue of viable accommodation facilities for teachers who are working in difficult areas.

To coincide with the International Teachers Day, the Ministry has planned to launch a programme to strengthen IT education in schools. The Indian Government has come forward to fund a project which would use solar power to provide IT education to schools which do not have electricity.

According to Ministry sources 1,500 schools have been already identified. According to Minister Premajayantha, special emphasis has been laid on improving English education in the country. Already 510 schools are using English medium. Already the Ministry has started 130 support centres to teach English to teach 50,000 persons in a year.

All provincial education offices are to receive Rs. 2 million respectively for reconstruction work. Another 25 chosen divisional offices are to receive Rs. 1 million each. A registrar is to be appointed to each school which has a student population of over 500, to streamline the administration work.

According to the Minister, 3179, new teachers are to be recruited to the estate sector schools and another 600 for Muslim schools. Also a programme has been launched to uplift the schools in the conflict affected areas. Also Rs. 50 million has been allocated to uplift Pirivena education.

A sum of Rs.3,000 million has been allocated to improve the higher education sector for 2007.