– The Minister of Education Susil Premajayantha
The Minister of Education Dr. Susil Premajayantha says that the prime objective of the field of education is not to provide an employment to a person but to provide a successful teacher to the students. Accordingly, nobody will be given teaching appointments after the year 2028 except to the Bachelor of Education graduates passed out of the national university of education.
The minister stated at this occasion that the graduates will be generated within four years’ time from a national university created by amalgamating all 19 Colleges of Education and the applicants will be selected from the first round of Z score of the Advanced Level depending on the available vacancies for the subjects. After three study years they will be given a practical training in teaching in the final year and in this way the actions will be taken to send a quality teacher to the classroom.
The minister mentioned this information while addressing a committee meeting held at the Ministry of Education regarding the implementation of future education development programs. This meeting was held with the objective of obtaining the assistance from the provincial level for the implementation of future education development programs planned at the national level and to improve the education at provincial level. Further expressing the ideas, the minister said that the responsibility of implementing national policies lies with the Ministry of Education and the responsibility and the duty of the provincial education authorities is to implement those policies at provincial level and these activities must be done with a better coordination between national and provincial levels.
Although few schools show the positive results, it is not sufficient as a country and the prime objective of the Ministry of Education is to provide the equal opportunities in education to all children in the country through the promotion of entire school system of the country by providing necessary human and physical resources including qualified teachers, said the minister. For this purpose, the education reforms were started, but it is not sufficient at the moment. Therefore, in line with the message given to 195 member countries by UNESCO, those education reforms have to be taken up to a broad education transformational process, said the minister at this occasion.
Expressing the views about the progress of providing school uniforms, Mr. Susil Premajayantha said that the Chinese government has agreed to provide 70% of the necessary uniforms and the first stock of it has already sent. The remaining 30% scheduled to be provided by local private businessmen is being finalized and the measures are being taken to do the distributing work and to achieve the target of providing the uniforms to the students by 15th of March.
The Secretary of Education Mr. M.N. Ranasingha, Provincial Secretaries and relevant officials also participated in this occasion.
