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Southern education Minister shares success behind Grade 5 Scholarship Examination
The Southern province had the most number of students who obtained marks above the cut off point at the year five scholarship examination, with 4702 students achieving the feat, an analysis of the results has shown.
Hambantota district marked the highest per centage of students who exceeded the cut off point with 13.89 followed by Vavuniya – with 13.10 per cent and Kurunegala 12.43 per cent.
One of the programmes which helped the students to obtain good marks was the Jayasanka programme launched by the Southern Provincial Council, education minister Chandima Rasaputra told the Sunday Times.
He said the programme was launched in 2010
“I saw there were many anomalies in the education system of the country, especially in the results. There were teacher shortages in schools as well. So I decided to make several changes in the system,” Minister Rasaputra said.
The Jayasanka programme was initially introduced with teachers from the province visiting schools and conducting presentations for students. “We recruited 18 teachers to visit the schools and the ministry bore transport and other expenses,” Mr. Rasaputra said.
He said it was a practice by the provincial councils to conduct six examinations before the scholarship exam proper. He said he realized that this was too stressful for the students. “We changed this in the southern province and instead of six exams we conducted four with the first being held in February.” He said this gave them the opportunity to assess and prepare the students.
He said the students’ parents too were advised on how best they could help their children face the examination with minimal stress. Workshops were held for both teachers and students.
“These helped everyone concerned to understand the weaknesses of each student and which areas needed to be addressed without pressurising the students. This programme worked successfully and our students were able to secure good marks,” he said.
The minister said interestingly they were able to predict the marks the students would obtain at the scholarship exam proper by looking at the marks obtained in the pre-scholarship examinations. “The student who came first in the island got similar results in the pre scholarship exams,” the minister said referring to Sandaru Balahewa from Mahinda Vidyalaya, who obtained 198 marks.
Commenting on the overall good performance of the students of the southern province he said 4702 obtained marks above the cut of point while 3450 obtained marks between 150 -159. The cut off mark for Hambantota is 156 while it is 160 in Matara and Galle
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