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| Sunday, 31 October 2004 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Learning centres for street children The Non-Formal Education Unit of the Ministry of Education has launched a programme called Nena Sarana for the thousands of street children in Sri Lanka. Under this programme, learning centres will be set up throughout the island, which will conduct special programmes for the benefit of these children. Seven such learning centres have already been established with the latest opening its doors in Galle recently. A survey done by the Non-Formal Education Unit had shown that there are nearly 6,000 street children in the country and that the number is an increase from the previous years. ##### School textbooks before December The Ministry of Education has entrusted its Educational Publications Department to produce and distribute the school textbooks which are required for year 2005 to schools before the end of November. Work in this regard has already started and the distribution of free textbooks commenced in September.
Multiple textbooks have been introduced for Grade 7 from 2005. Seven titles of books have been produced under the Multiple Book Option. As it has been decided to replace Social Studies and History with History, Geography and Civic Education, three separate textbooks in the three media will be introduced for Grade 7. English medium textbooks for Grade 9 have been produced for the subjects Mathematics, Science and Technology, Social Studies and History and Health and Physical Education. English medium textbooks required for Grades 6, 7 and 8 were earlier translated and distributed to schools under the Amity Schools Project. To reduce the weight of the books, steps have been taken to print certain books in two or three volumes, which would enable children to carry one smaller book at a time. To encourage the re-use of textbooks, proposals have been made to reward students who use books carefully. It has been decided to conduct workshops and seminars at school level and poster and essay competitions to create awareness about this plan. In 1980, 131 titles of books were distributed while this has now increased to 292. The number of copies to be distributed is 74 million. ##### CCF book project Six Tamil children's books have been published by the Central Cultural Fund (CCF) to commemorate Universal Children's Day which fell on October 1. These are translations of Sinhala books. Another set of children's books written by experienced as well as upcoming authors will be published by the CCF before the end of this year. The new books written in Sinhala will also be translated into Tamil and English. The CCF Children's Book Project was launched last year for the benefit of the country's younger generation so that they can widen their knowledge on Sri Lanka's heritage and cultural values. Twelve children's books have been published in Sinhala so far under this project. Among them are stories written by well-known authors like Sybil Wettasinghe, Anula de Silva and Rupa Amarasekera. |
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| Politics | Produced by Lake House |
Special features of the programme are: supplying textbooks direct to
schools with a student population above 4,000, which has expedited
(quickened) the distribution of books, as Divisional Directors need not
keep a large volume of books in their storage.
