The Minister of Education Dr. Susil Premajayantha says that he is always against principly to the concept of national schools which divides the society into segments and instead of it the cluster schools will be created in the future connecting the nearby schools together based on the geographical settings and the requirements of the students. This cluster will function with one or more Lead Schools.
The minister mentioned this while addressing a meeting held at Colombo Zonal Education Office. Further expressing his ideas at this moment, the minister said that it could be possible to identify such 1200 cluster schools island wide by about next January. Within this cluster an economical inter-connected management process will be activated and the requirements of the students are fulfilled through the exchange of human and physical resources within it. In this effort there will not be a division or transfer of schools or resources and only an exchange of resources will happen through a physical and technical methodology, the minister emphasized. This Lead School concept will be implemented under the process of educational administrative reforms through the National Educational Reforms Center (NERC) and the Provincial Educational Reform Centers (PERC), and through this program there will not be isolated schools in the country in the future and any single student will not be neglected, the minister further stated.
There is the possibility for national schools and other schools to become a lead school in these school clusters and we will be able to see a formal common classification of schools like primary schools, junior secondary schools and senior secondary schools and through this the concept of school profile including the standard and the criteria of the school system will be developed properly, the minister mentioned.
