Rs 306 billion allocated:

Sri Lanka’s adult literacy rate 98 percent

Sandasen Marasinghe, Irangika Range and Disna Mudalige

The benefits of education should flow to the entire population and the government has allocated Rs 306 billion for the education sector for 2013, Education Deputy Minister Vijith Vijayamuni Zoysa said in Parliament yesterday.

The deputy minister was speaking at the Budget 2013 committee stage debate under the Heads of the Education Ministry .

He further said that adult literacy rate of Sri Lanka was 98 percent while the computer literacy rate was 38 percent.

‘We have given priority for information and communication technology as a powerful instrument for development of education ,’ he said. With the implementation of islandwide programmes to increase information technology and communication, the skills of students in rural schools too are expected to develop.

We are providing facilities to watch ‘Nenasa’ TV programmes to enhance the performance in Mathematics, English and Sinhala of school children. Computers and learning software have been provided to students as an educational tool.

About 1,463 students in 17 schools have already been provided with computers under the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.