More students to be directed towards science, maths

Ishara Mudugamuwa

Mahinda Chinthanaya has transformed the country’s education sector, Education Minister Bandula Gunawardane said.

Participating at the the launch of www.skoool.lk website yesterday at the Education Ministry, Minister Gunawardane said as knowledge is considered the capital investment in this global society, all countries have to train and manage their human resources properly. The minister said the inability to find qualified people for available job opportunities and inability to provide jobs for certain groups of educated people is the main problem in Sri Lanka.

“Though there are plenty of job opportunities available for students from the science, mathematics and commerce streams only 21 percent of A/L students follow the science stream and another 27 percent follow the commerce stream.” said the minister.

He also said the majority of A/L students follow the arts stream and which is 41 percent.

Among them a majority select subjects such as Sinhala, Buddhist civilization and political science as they can easily obtain ‘A’ passes in them. “The Education Ministry plans to increase the students following science and mathematics for their Advanced Level examination to 40 percent by 2016 which presently stands at 21 percent.

It is also expected to enhance the number of students in the commerce stream up to 35 percent and reduce the number of Arts students to 25 percent.”

The minister said the government has also given priority to improve information technology knowledge. Computer laboratories has been established in 5,000 schools and also international standard information technology training has been provided for 150,000 teachers and 3,000 principals.

About 2,000 schools were networked through school net.

“Intel Sri Lanka, together with the Education Ministry launched the new and improved skoool.lk website to the students and teachers of the country today.

The official website of the skoool learning and teaching programme now has content from the local syllabus for two important subjects, science and mathematics, which are now ava

ilable in Sinhala and Tamil. Three translations were done by the University of Moratuwa.

The British Council have made their English courses freely available on the website as well,” the minister said.