- Discussions to include Artificial Intelligence in syllabuses from grade 8
The Minister of Education Dr. Susil Premajayantha says that the curricula of all grades from grade 6 to grade13 will be updated from next year 2024 and the discussions have already been started to include Artificial Intelligence in the syllabus of grade 8. The subject of Artificial Intelligence will be added to the curriculum at least as an optional subject, then the opportunity will be there for the students to learn that subject along with the subject of Information Technology, the minister said. He also mentioned that it has been scheduled to obtain the cabinet approval within two weeks’ time for the policy to digitalize the education as the base for all these educational transformations. The minister mentioned this while joining the event of offering medals and certificates of Huawei Information and Communication Technology competition held for the second time in Colombo.
The minister also mentioned at this occasion that as the future of younger generation depends on the technological development, the opportunities of university admissions for students must be increased gradually in order to open up the space for that purpose and also the courses in the fields of Science and Technology must be increased within the higher education. To facilitate this purpose, Science and Mathematics teachers must be provided adequately to the rural schools and the concept of cluster schools will be utilized under a better resource management to achieve this target.
At the moment, the countries of the same level with us are in a 10 years advanced position more than our country in the field of Technology and we cannot go back to the 20th century while living in the third decade of the 21st century. Therefore, we must achieve the garget of going for a compulsory educational reformative process, said Mr. Susil Premajayantha.
The Chairperson of BOI Mr. Dinesh Weerakkodi and the chief executive officer of Huawei in Sri Lanka Mr. Tao Guang also attended in this occasion.