Education Ministry to recruit more trained teachers

by Ananda KANNANGARA

The Education Ministry will recruit more trained teachers for subjects such as Science, Mathematics, Accountancy, Economics, English and Information Technology, Education Ministry sources said.

Education Minister Bandula Gunawardane has directed heads of District Educational Zones to look into the number of trained teachers required for these subjects in their respective schools.The Minister assured that teacher vacancies for other subjects will be filled before the end of this year.

Minister Gunawardane told the Sunday Observer that the teacher shortage in almost all schools in urban areas have been filled and only few teachers are to be recruited to schools in rural and remote areas.

The Minister admired the interest shown by children to study foreign languages.

He said graduate teachers will be appointed to teach Chinese, French, Korean and Japanese.

Many schoolchildren prefer to learn foreign languages, considering the availability of large number of local and foreign job opportunities, statistics revealed."Unlike in the past, there is a demand for securing tourism related jobs here and abroad by school leavers", the Minister said.Referring to job opportunities in Korea the Minister said Sri Lankans are keen to learn the Korean Language. The Minister said foreign languages will be taught in rural schools as the number of rural youth seeking foreign jobs has increased drastically during the past several months.He said there are vacancies for foreign languages teachers who will be selected by an examination.