skoool.lk re-launched

Sara Pathirana

In order to empower students from rural areas to excel in their studies and especially to help them gain the interest and confidence boost in crucial subjects such as Mathematics and Science, the Ministry of Education, along with collaborative assistance from Intel and the University of Moratuwa, relaunched the skoool.lk website to the country's students and teachers.

The official website of the 'skoool' learning and teaching programmes now has content from the local syllabus for the two important subjects, Mathematics and science, which is now available in Sinhala and Tamil. The University of Moratuwa provided the translations in the respective languages. The British Council also came on board this project by providing their English courses freely available on the website.

To date, a whopping proportion of 51% of A/L students are in the Arts subject compared to the 21% in Maths and Science. Only this statistic of students produces doctors, engineers etc. where as most of the other students turn to the banking and other sectors. Students need the impact of interactive study and the idea of this website fits that much needed criterion.

"Jobs are available, especially in sectors that need English and professional skills in technical fields but sadly, less qualified candidates are available to fill the roles. Potential employees would need to garner their English-speaking ability as well. We have understood that with Sri Lanka's provision of free education, this is one of the main problems faced today," Bandula Gunawardena, Minister of Education acknowledged.

"Maths and Science students in the country amount to 21% and the target is to increase the amount to 25% by 2016. The same applies to the current Commerce students who amount to 27% and we target to increase the amount of sit-ins by 8% and as for the Arts students, the aim is to get them down, from the current 51% to 25% and we work on increasing the amount of students with IT knowledge from the current 35% up to 65% by 2016," Gunawardena stated. "Speaking about the incentive taken up by the British Council in assisting with their provision of English courses, where they have assisted with the website 'skoool' content, Sri Lanka is the third country in the world, after the UK and Vietnam, to have ventured into this project. The bottom line is that this tool can reach a wider audience now, without any time barriers for the users," Indika de Zoysa, Country Business Manager, Intel EM Ltd, Sri Lanka Liaison Office said.

"With the high levels of distractions experienced in today's society, textbooks alone cannot stimulate the minds of students, therefore, digital tools such as skoool.lk will go a long way in boosting the psychological features and development of our students by helping them grasp concepts in a faster and better manner," Anura Dissanayake, Additional Secretary to the President commented.