Education News
Plan for 50-less-students schools facing closure: WP Education Ministry
View(s):The Western Provincial (WP) Ministry of Education (MoE) has developed a plan to protect schools vulnerable to closure due to lack of students.
The latest survey reveals the WP has 75 schools with 50 or less students, of which 38 are in the Kalutara District, 19 in the Gampaha District and 18 in the Colombo District.
There are also 368 schools in the WP having between 50 to 200 students. Kalutara District with 143 is the highest, followed by Gampaha District with 142 and 83 in the Colombo District.
One method envisaged is to have multi-teaching classrooms where students of several classes will be ‘pooled’ for classes, while another method is to have community schools where preference will be given to teaching of vocations such as carpentry or fisheries industry, subject to the area. The objective being to attract students to a related vocation.
Another method is to have cluster schools where about 50 students each from about 4 schools will be ‘pooled’ and available teachers made use of to teach.
According to the Education Ministry, there are 493 schools with less than 20 students. Â - DW