Retired teachers for A/L English medium Arts stream

Uditha KUMARASINGHE and Irangika RANGE

Education Minister Susil Premajayantha told Parliament yesterday that the Government has decided to recruit qualified teachers who had recently retired from service to teach Advanced Level Arts and Commerce subjects in the English medium in Government schools, on a contract basis. Applications will be called within the next two months to recruit retired teachers to teach in the English medium as a solution to the shortage of qualified teachers," the Minister added.

Although there are 76,370 graduate teachers serving in all the schools in the country, only 405 are qualified to teach Advanced Level classes in the English medium.

Of the 405 graduate teachers picked to teach in the Advanced Level English medium classes, only eight have passed English as a subject for the GCE Advanced Level, he said. The Minister further said only 252 graduate teachers of the 405 qualified teachers had studied English as a subject for their degree. Last year 4,200 students had sat for the GCE Ordinary Level examination in the English medium and 3,760 had passed the examination, he said.