In conjunction with World Teachers’ Day on October 5th, I extend my heartfelt greetings to all teachers who are being recognized through various teacher appreciation ceremonies held nationwide as we celebrate National Teachers’ Day in our country on October 6th.
This year’s National Teachers’ Day theme is “Recognizing Teaching as a Collective Profession with New Meaning.”
Accordingly, by listening to the voices of teachers and recognizing their value, we have taken steps to advance toward a new social discourse on education.
On this National Teachers’ Day, I call upon all teachers in our nation to join hands with us in writing a new chapter in the history of education.
Even as we look ahead to the coming decades of the future world, I firmly believe that our nation’s guiding generation of teachers will have the vision to shape a vocational, technological, and digital education system suitable for leading our student generation forward.
It is no secret that the great responsibility of nurturing our children to become genetically gifted, capable, and competent individuals for this future rests heavily upon the hands of the teaching fraternity.
In the future, vocational education will become a compulsory subject stream within the Advanced Level curriculum. Therefore, we must promptly identify and select the required secondary schools, training teachers, facilities, and human resources for that purpose.
At this moment, I respectfully remember the teachers – true parents to their students – who, despite minimal facilities, continue to share the light of knowledge even in the most difficult and remote regions.
Among the virtues of teachers, we celebrate today, I also wish to pay my deepest respect to those teachers whose tireless and silent dedication, made with full conscience and without seeking recognition, may not be visible to the public eye.
I sincerely wish that the principals and teachers currently serving within our education system will be able to perform a service capable of leaving an indelible mark on the hearts of students through their boundless commitment to the evolving process of transformative education. With these sentiments, I extend my warmest good wishes on the occasion of National Teachers’ Day 2025.
Dr. Harini Amarasuriya
Prime Minister of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
Minister of Education, Higher Education, and Vocational Education