National Schools programme begins April 30: Ed Ministry
View(s):More than 1000 schools will be upgraded to national school level within the next three years
The programme to develop 1000 national schools by the Education Ministry will be launched next week, Education Ministry Secretary Kapila Perera said.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa will take part in the launch of the programme from Siyambalanduwa in the Monaragala district on April 30.
Simultaneously the programme will be launched in all other provinces.
Accordingly 1,169 schools will be upgraded to become national schools within the next three years where the infrastructure facilities, staff strength, laboratory facilities etc. will be upgraded.
Prof. Perera said all these schools will have classes up to the A/L grades in all streams, including science.
He said 123 Divisional Secretary areas which currently do not have national schools will gain national schools under the programme.
The programme has been launched in keeping with the President’s “Vistas of Prosperity and Splendor” concept.
Extending high quality educational opportunities on an equitable basis, throughout the country, increasing the present number of national schools up to 1000 to minimise competition for school admission and creating a cluster school system of enhanced facilities of national schools on a shared basis are some of the measures that will be taken under the programme to enhance education in Sri Lanka.
The objectives of the programme were: reasonably expand the national schools network across the country, significantly increase the opportunities for high quality secondary education, minimise unnecessary demand for certain schools, reduce crowding in certain schools and assure the utilisation of available educational resources (physical and human) at an optimum level by providing such resources based on the justifiable criteria, norms and guidelines to all schools.
Enabling other schools, especially the secondary schools network, with these national schools for knowledge and resource sharing, will optimise the benefits of expensive educational resources by locating those in most viable schools which can be accessible to many other students from surrounding schools, gradually entrust a rational transition of students from primary secondary to upper secondary stages between provincial and national schools and to implement targeted interventions to address specific issues prevailing in certain regions, areas and schools in parallel to this programme.
The criteria considered for selection of schools to be upgraded to national school level are as follows:
Status of access to and participation in the selected schools during the past five years, student demand for the school over the past five years, feasibility for the expansion of infrastructure facilities, availability of adequate land for future development projects, socio-economic conditions and GCE O/L and A/L student flow in streams such as science and technology, aesthetics, languages and humanities.
Some of the other measures that will be considered under the programme include: possibilities to promote trilingual education opportunities and expanding the schools’ premises to increase the student population.