The Secretary of the Ministry of Education Professor Kapila Perera
The Secretary of the Ministry of Education Professor Kapila Perera said that it is expected to start English medium schools at provincial level as a pilot project after receiving the recommendations of the experts committee that has already been appointed by the ministry of education for the purpose of providing proposals for starting the English medium education in the schools throughout the island and depending on the success of this project the measures will be taken to provide this facility to the students in the entire country.
Further expressing his ideas he said that the economy of Sri Lanka has also been affected by the covid 19 pandemic which is spreading all over the world now. Because of this reason, appeals are being flowing continuously from the parents who send their children to international schools asking for the opportunities to admit those children to government schools since they cannot pay the monthly fees due to the prevailing economic difficulties. The problem in this aspect is those children are learning in English medium from primary education till advanced level. But in the government sector there is only limited number of English medium schools. In those schools also only core subjects are taught in English. Therefore, we believe a permanent solution must be given for this purpose. Accordingly, a committee consisted of educational experts has been appointed to submit recommendations for solving this problem. In this situation, the attention has been drawn towards the possibility of starting such schools in Colombo and in each province as a pilot project. If this project becomes successful, it will be possible to provide such English medium schools to all regions in the country, he said.
We will be able to implement this project in parallel to the 1000 national schools program and tri-lingual schools program.
It is pointed out that according to the education policy of the present government it is expected to increase the number of students following the science stream in advanced level from 35% up to 60% while reducing the number of students following the arts stream in advanced level till 25%. The project designed for amalgamating Nugegoda Vijayarama College and Devi Balika Vidyalaya will be stopped and that school is converted into an English medium school.
