Intel supports Ministry of Education's "1,000 Schools Project"

Intel Sri Lanka signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Education today in support of the Government's 1,000 Schools Project. Under this MoU, Intel Teach, a professional development program that enables educators to effectively integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into their lessons to promote problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration of skills among their students will be introduced to enhance the teaching experience across these schools.

At the signing ceremony, Minister of Education, Bandula Gunewardena said, "ICT education is vital to succeed in the 21st century and our work with Intel has helped make significant progress towards achieving this. Our initiative of launching 1000 schools across the Island is aimed at taking the benefits of good education to the rural children. Having trained over 23,000 teachers, islandwide, the Intel(r) Teach program will help teachers in these 1,000 schools too to integrate ICT into their lessons and empower our students to keep abreast with the rest of the world." The MoU was signed by H. M. Gunasekera, Secretary, Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka and Indika de Zoysa, Country Manager for Intel Sri Lanka in the presence of the Minister of Education, Bandula Gunewardena, Anura Dissanayake, Additional Secretary to the President's Office, and other Ministry officials.

"The MoE's 1,000 schools project is making strides in creating a workforce that will turn Sri Lanka into a knowledge hub. Integrating Intel's Teach program with this will equip our teachers with the skills needed to achieve this goal," said Anura Dissanayake, Additional Secretary to the President's Office.

"Our work with Intel over the past five years has led to remarkable progress in ICT education in the country. We hope to take this further with the 1,000 schools project too," said H. M. Gunasekera, Secretary, Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka.

Indika de Zoysa, Country Manager for Intel Sri Lanka said, "Intel has always worked towards improving the standards of education in Sri Lanka and supported the Government's initiative of taking ICT to the students. Intel Teach program helps young minds compete in an innovative society that comes from the teachers."

Now in its second decade, Intel Teach, which relies on a combination of online and face-to-face instruction, continues to build more flexible course offerings and train teachers around the world. Working with national, regional and local educators and governments in more than 70 countries, Intel(r) Teach is the largest and most successful program of its kind. In fact, according to Intel's estimates, more than 300 million students have been prepared to learn, lead, and succeed by over 10 million teachers trained in Intel Teach.

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom and blogs.intel.com.