Project SEARCH by Royal College: Helping rural children improve their spoken English
View(s):Some cricket legends from Royal College and several other old boys now domiciled in Australia, the UK and USA have joined hands to launch a project called SEARCH to help rural children who succeed at the all island grade five scholarship exams and gain entry to the leading government schools in Colombo.
File picture of a rural classroom
The purpose behind the project is to help them to improve their skills in spoken English.
Since launching the plan under the title ‘Project SEARCH’ (Spoken English at Royal College Hostel) several volunteers have offered an hour of their time each week to tutor these grade nine students at the Royal College hostel, online. Thirty tutors have already been recruited and allocated to tutor two students each.
Among the tutors are cricketing legends of Royal, 1957 cricket captain Mike Willie, 1958 cricket captain Lorensz Pereira, 1962 cricket captain Darrel Lieversz, Sadha Ranasinghe Lakshman Obeysinghe, former Army Lt. Colonel P. V. J. de Silva and a host of others, including former teachers, educationists and the wives of many volunteers.
Royal College Acting Principal Samantha Gunatileke and the Acting Hostel Warden JanakaJayasinghe are on board with the project. They have asked that the project be extended to the boys moving into grade ten next year and for the programme to continue with the next intake of grade nine students.
The pioneers of this project are Padmasena Dissanayake (Royal College Class of ‘64) and Nihal de Run (Royal College Class of ‘57). Their aim is to hone the spoken English skills of the rural students who gain entrance to the country’s premier state schools through scholarships so they can find suitable employment after leaving the College. The spoken English deficiency among many of these students have long deprived them of better prospects.
Tutorial aid in the form of Basic English textbooks has been developed by another old Royalist domiciled at Perth in Australia. Reference is also made to the National Institute of Education website where the syllabus and the text books are found.
Project SEARCH plans to include English elocution for the students who progress in grade ten. The students are also required to play their part in the project by having functioning devices with software downloaded. They also need to keep their mobile phones topped up, and data paid for Wi-Fi services. Financial packages will be made available to the needy students.
The pioneers have called for more volunteers to join Project SEARCH. They can reach out to nihal@derun.net.au or
scholorshipsforusa@gmail.com.