EFSL: Govt. should give priority to rural and plantation schools
View(s):The Education Forum Sri Lanka (EFSL) has called on the Government to decentralise allocations for expenditure on schools to give maximum benefit to schoolchildren attending rural schools.
Rural schools get little or no funds for expenditure on the health of their students or school development, it said recently.
While urban schools raise money from students coming from affluent families, children from rural schools are unable to do so, it pointed out.
As local authorities know local needs best, it recommends that allocations to rural and plantations schools be made at provincial and divisional levels for locally specific needs.
It has also called on the Government to reactivate school attendance committees comprising health and school authorities at all Gramasevaka divisions to monitor schoolchildren while they are at home these days.
This would help track students’ mental health, anxieties and abusive conditions in the home environment, EFSL said.
-CC