Technical education, a must

When Peoples Alliance government took the initiative to establish Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technical Education (SLIATE) in 1995, Prof. Wiswa Warnapala was Deputy Minister of Higher Education. The minister shared his views on technical education in a recent speech.

In the context of the economic changes that were taking place in Sri Lanka, the country wanted to take the initiative to devise policies to meet the scarcity of trained technological manpower for the purpose of accelerating the process of economic development in the country.

The SLIATE enjoys the right to establish Advanced Technological Institutes (ATI) in every province, and it, at present, manage 12 such Institutes, catering to nearly 3000 students who enter the different courses with GCE A/L qualifications. With the establishment of this Institute with its branches, access to higher educational opportunities has been expanded; the expansion of access is the major challenge before the Government.

For instance, the number of students who sat the Advanced Level in 2008 stood at 293,819 out of which 131,000 have been qualified to enter the Universities. What the system can absorb is within the range of 20,000 and this means that nearly 110,000 students are left out of the system.

This is a waste of both intellectual resources and human capital. It is in this context that the expansion of Technical education became relevant; we need to create more and more alternative educational opportunities so that the ever-growing number of secondary school leavers could be trained for jobs available in a highly competitive job market.

I would like to refer to the finances of the SLIATE, which, for both recurrent and capital expenditure, spends nearly 180 million and 123 million respectively for the year 2006. By conducting fee-levying courses, it has earned 15.8 million.

Since the establishment of the Institute, it received no foreign assistance to upgrade its courses, specially the Higher National Diploma in Engineering program, which, in the last several years, has become an attractive course of study.

The Government, with a view to modernizing this program of studies, decided to obtain foreign assistance to upgrade the infrastructure at Mattakkuliya and Labuduwa Institutes and they are to be developed as regional centres of excellence.

The aim, therefore, is to produce high level technicians who can find employment both here and abroad; the opportunities based on employability are to be expanded, and it proposes to introduce new courses in such areas as Megatronics, Marine Technology, Textile Technology, Highways and Telecommunication Engineering. It would be useful to refer to the nature of enrollment for different courses, and the following are the details.

In addition to the existing centres throughout the country, the SLIATE proposes to establish three more new centres at Tangalle, Ratnapura and Vavuniya.

The main aim is to expand the access and diversify the system of higher education in the country; access to higher educational opportunities can be expanded through a planned expansion of the Institute, which can meet the multiple demands of economic development of the country by producing the right type of skilled personnel.

Several types of non-University institutions have developed in various countries, and advantages, which it offers, need to be taken into consideration in formulating the Sri Lankan strategy in the field of higher education.

Many non-University institutions offer training programs that can respond to labour market demand in a given country, and this is why we propose to encourage more and more multi-disciplinary programs in various technical fields as such programs could produce the type of skilled labour demanded in a changing market economy.