Tertiary education development:

IT, English skills to rural youth

Development of the Educational Sector is a subject that has received great attention and importance in the Mahinda Chintana

First part of this article was published yesterday

Gampaha Wickramarachchi Ayurveda Institute

Construction of a hostel complex for both men and women and increase in the accommodation facilities for 100 boys and 100 girls, in order to increase in the students intake to 120 per year.

ICT education

Total expenditure - Rs 7,840 million. The proposal is to establish a SAARC Region Digital Educational Content Development Centre (SRDCDC), for the provision of ICT infrastructure to 3,000 rural schools with Internet connectivity under the ‘schoolnet’. The objective is to improve the teaching and learning environment through the expansion of networks and communication and sharing of knowledge between educators and learners across the country and across the SAARC region.

Over 600,000 direct beneficiaries who are schoolchildren (200 children per school, 3,000 schools.) There will also be four million indirect beneficiaries in Sri Lanka and 10 million indirect beneficiaries in SAARC countries.

Upgrading Sri Lankan schools

Total expenditure - Rs 2,190 million. The Education Ministry is focusing on the improvement of infrastructure facilities of rural schools in the Northern, Eastern, Central, Uva and North Central provinces. The project will provide a better educational environment to the above provinces. The objective is to improve the educational attainment and learning outcomes of students by providing essential infrastructure facilities for 15,000 students and improvement of infrastructure facilities of 600 rural and non-urban schools in the selected provinces. Under this program the quality and equity of 600 schools will be increased.

District Vocational Training Centre in Trincomalee

Total expenditure - Rs 1,800 million. Sri Lanka annually needs about 5,000 middle level technicians in various technical fields. The present output is not enough for the country.

Therefore the revision of curricula and expansion of technical education facilities especially in remote areas have become very important to address the future demand. With this objective a District Vocational Training Centre will be established in Trincomalee to provide vocational training facilities for youth in the Eastern Province and increase the student intake to 500 per year with the introduction of 13 new courses.

College of Advanced Technology in Gampaha

Total expenditure - Rs 2,050 million. The objective is to enhance the quality of vocational training and skills development programs conducted by various institutions and increase student intake to 400 per year and conducting 160 teachers training courses.

Five Vocational Training Centres in Northern and Eastern Provinces

Total expenditure - Rs 8,800 million. The objective of this project is to establish five Vocational training Centres in Mannar, Trincomalee, Serunuwara, Kalkudah and Kalmunai for the improvement of the quality and the relevance of the tertiary vocational training system in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. The project will construct the necessary workshops and other buildings, will supply machinery, tools and equipment for the workshops along with other related services. It will also undertake a capacity building program in these vocational training centres and increase the student intake to 500 per year.

Assessment Centres

Total Expenditure - Rs 398 million. This project is to establish assessment centres in the Puttalam, Badulla, Moneragala and Anuradhapura Districts under the supervision of the National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority (NAITA). The objective of the project is to improve the standards of Competency Based Training (CBT) and the National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) and to increase the student intake to 500 per year and increase in the number of trainees.

Nena Sala Centres

Computer technology has been taken to remote villages during the last five years. Establishment of the Nena Sala Centres was the program launched to take IT and English knowledge to remote villages.

Nena Sala Centres have been established throughout the country. An IT network has been built incorporating 3,500 IT Centres in schools islandwide.

Vocational training

The government plans to increase the number of persons being given vocational training annually to 96,000 by the year 2015. In order to achieve the target the Youth Affairs Ministry is implementing several projects to construct training centres and upgrade the existing ones. These projects include constriction of buildings and providing training equipment to upgrade the facilities for the college of technology in Jaffna.

The project is being implemented at a cost of Rs 296 million of which Rs 233 million is provided by the Korean International Corporation Agency.

The Ministry completed the upgrading of Niyagama National Vocational Training Centre Project in March this year. The project scope included construction of buildings, Provision of training, equipment and vehicles, and staff development.

The cost of the total project amounted to Rs 1,214 million and of which Rs 966 million was provided by the Export Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) of Korea.

Courtesy: Media Centre for National Development