Colleges of Education:

Monthly allowance 100 percent up

Chaminda Perera

The monthly allowance of students who are studying in the Colleges of Education islandwide will be increased by 100 percent from next year, said Education Minister Susil Premajayantha.

The Education Minister was speaking at the presentation of teacher appointments to over 2,900 students who passed out from the Colleges of Education island wide at Temple Trees yesterday.

These teachers have been posted to the national and provincial schools where there is an acute teacher shortage . These teachers will have to complete at least five years in the school to which they were initially posted by the Ministry.

Over 1,170 Sinhala medium teachers, 863 English medium teachers and 878 Tamil medium teachers received appointments on this occasion.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Western Province Governor Alavi Mowlana, Education Services Minister Nirmala Kotalawala and National Integration Minister Vinayargamurthi Muralitharan and Chief Ministers of the Southern, Western, North Western, North Central, Eastern Provinces, Central, Sabaragamuwa were present.

Minister Premajayantha said the teacher transfer is strictly carried out on a formula and no one is transferred or given preferential treatment in contravention of this methodology.

He said another batch of 150 teachers will be posted to schools in the Eastern Province by the end of the year.

The Ministry is in the process of providing all facilities to the Ruwanpura College of Education to upgrade it as an IT college and students wishing to study IT in the College of Education are recruited to that college,” he said.

The Ministry has made all arrangements to ensure that more than 75 percent of the teacher population has received IT training.

The teacher population in the country was 187,000 when the Government came to power, but we -were able to increase it to 218,000. The Ministry has appointed more than 3,000 teachers to the Eastern Province after the Eastern Provincial Council was set up, the Minister said.

Southern Provincial Chief Minister Shan Wijayalal de Silva spoke on behalf of all Chief Ministers at this ceremony.