Measures to upgrade English and ICT education

Interview by Ishara Mudugamuwa

The Sunday Observer spoke to the Education Minister Susil Premajayantha about the latest educational developments recently.

Excerpts:

Q: Explain why 2009 is declared the year of English and ICT education.

A: By declaring 2009 as the year of English and ICT education, we are highlighting that skills in these areas need to be improved and enhanced in Sri Lanka. In order to achieve these goals, we have initiated and updated various programmes around the island to offer access to even those in the rural areas to obtain the maximum benefit. For example, we have upgraded our educational college in Penideniya to enhance English skills of teachers in the Kandy area. This fully-equipped college can accommodate up to 400 teachers. It has computer laboratories, libraries and a self-access centre.

Q: What steps has the government taken to achieve the goal of upgrading English education in the country?

A: Under the Mahinda Chintana, the Presidential Task Force committee chaired by Sunimal Fernando sent 41 senior English teachers to the Language University in Hyderabad for a 3 month English training programme. We are hoping to sent another group of teachers shortly for this programme. We have also started English medium from Grade 6 onwards because learning English is a life long programme. Every year, the number of students sitting the G.C.E O/L in English is increasing which teaching in the shows how essential it is to train our teachers. We have also recruited graduates to teach English in the Science, Arts and Commerce streams. We are hoping to recruit another 280 graduates in January 2009 for these three streams to teach English. We have 30 English regional support centres assisted by the British Council and the last one was opened in Meepe. The British Council helped us train teachers and introduced new teaching methodologies to further English skills. We are happy that there is a good great interest to learn English and it is our duty to make every effort to accommodate the students who want to study in the English medium. At the moment, we have 18,000 English teachers and every year, national educational colleges even in the remote areas offer English training. Another initiative we set up together with the Defence Ministry is to train 605 cadet officers as English teachers. They have been assigned to teach English at schools in problematic areas around the country like Moneragala, Batticoloa, Ampara, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. This initiative has been welcomed because rural areas like these have no access to English education.

Q: What steps have been taken to enhance ICT skills?

A: We have introduced ICT as a subject for the G.C.E O/L examination where around 30,000 students have taken it as a technical subject. We are hoping to introduce ICT as a subject for the G.C.E. A/L from 2009 onwards. Further, we have close links with the ICT faculties of the Colombo, Moratuwa and Peradeniya universities. We also have 100 CRCs (Computer Resource Centres) that are used by school leavers providing them with a 6 month ICT training programme and in some instances our ICT teachers are trained there too. So far, we have initiated 3,400 computer access centres under various projects by using our education fund. With the assistance of the Asian Development Bank, we have also set up the SEMP to enhance secondary ICT education programmes.

Q: At present, students who have sat for the recent `Maths 2' G.C.E. O/L Examination paper have complained that the structure is different making it difficult. Explain the reason for it.

A: With regard to competency based evaluations, we develop the curriculum every five years. So by 2003, we started to develop the curriculum by providing new textbooks, teacher guides and model examination papers. Unfortunately, some schools have not taken necessary steps to do this. This is the reason of the complaints of the examination structure change.