Education Minister Dr. Susil Premajayantha said Advanced Level classes for children will begin as soon as the Ordinary Level Examination is over.
He said that after appearing for the GCE Ordinary Level Examination, it takes about four months for the results to be released and that during this time students get involved in other activities, classes and with the new procedure being implemented the child will remain focused on the education process continuously.
The Minister said this while participating at the opening of the Kandy Vidyartha Vidyalaya Stadium, which consists of 10 cricket pitches, with the financial support of the Sri Lanka Cricket.
He emphasized that by starting Advanced Level classes before the release of the results of the Ordinary Level exams, two groups of students appearing for the Advanced Level will join simultaneously in the schools and the principals will be able to manage the space so that does notbecome a problem.
The Minister stated that there is a need to make a transformational change in education and for that the necessary changes are being made step by step.
He said that English medium of education was first introduced in 2001 for the high school science stream and currently about 500 schools from sixth grade to high school are teaching in the English medium. During a discussion held with the sub-committee on education reforms with the President last week,he said that the President had given instructions to hire teachers who had recently retired from teaching in English medium, for a period of three years.
MinisterPremajayantha also said that teachers who are currently teaching in schools will be trained for that purpose. He said that an amount of Rs.1,500 million has been allocated for the promotion of school cricket in this year’s budget and that he had advised the School Cricket Association to work on the promotion of school cricket under a joint programme with Sri Lanka Cricket.
The minister said that it is the government’s responsibility to provide an equal education opportunity to all 4.1 million children who are studying in government schools and under the new education reforms, the programme of updating the syllabus with modules will be started next term in the 200 schools selected under this, from grades one, six and ten. He also stated that related pilot projects will be implemented.
Asela Kuruluwansa