Education Minister Dr. Susil Premajayantha said the gazette notification to recruitment of 2,535 teaching assistants for estate schools will be published in May.
He said that it is expected to recruit that group and send them to schools after providing them with basic training.
However, the Minister said that there is still a huge shortage of teachers in estate schools since there is a scarcity of qualified personnel to be recruited as teachers for estate schools.
“Even in the Education Colleges, there are very few qualified students and there are only a handful of graduates, so it is difficult to fill vacancies in estate schools,” the Minister said.
As a solution to that, he said that he requested the relevant provincial authorities in Uva and Central Provinces to take steps to provide teacher appointments to existing graduates. The Public Service Commission has authorised the Education Ministry to recruit 500 more teaching assistants under the Teacher Services Act. The minister said that those recruited this way will be trained up to the Diploma level within three years by teacher centres and will be deployed to schools.
Dharma Sri Abeyratne