Sri Lanka Education Forum

The JVP charged yesterday that some NGOs had interfered with the national education policy of the country in an unlawful manner by publishing teaching guidebooks and organizing essay competitions. Posing a question to Education Minister Susil Premjayantha, in Parliament, JVP MP Sunil Handunnetti asked as to how the German enterprise GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit) had assisted in the publication of a teaching guide handbook of the Education Department of the Northern and Eastern provinces. He said this book had been approved by Provincial Education Secretary R. Thiagalingam. Mr. Handunnetti said there was also a note of appreciation in this handbook by ...

Education Minister Susil Premajayantha informed Parliament yesterday he would take steps to call for applications for Grade one school admissions according to the previous circular with necessary amendments since political parties stressed the need to ignore guidelines set by the Supreme Court. The House took up the issue as an adjournment motion proposed by the JVP which noted that there would be a serious threat to free education if the Supreme Court guidelines were implemented. Minister Premajayantha said applications would be called from August 15 in conformity with the previous 2006/20 circular after introducing the necessary amendments to it. He said he would ...

When did the Sri Lankans (before that the Ceylonese) start learning the language of the British? Maybe from the 1790s or the early 1800s! We have at least had an exposure to this funny language for 200 years.The following account from “A Short History of Lanka” by H.W.Codrington will provide more evidence to the reader that the then inhabitants of Lanka would have had even an earlier exposure! “The Maritime Provinces of Lanka were now in the possession of the British. The first Englishman who is known to have lived in the Island was the Franciscan friar Andrew, who laboured in ...

Disciplining children seems to be the second most priority of a school, next to studies and education. In some schools it is given the highest priority, even over studies. What is our objective in doing so? What are the byproducts of disciplining? How will it effect the student and finally the society it self? There are quite a few questions that come to the mind, if you really take a second look at the subject.   First let us see what action and behavior is seen in the Principals, Teachers and Prefects of schools in disciplining students. They have designed and are ...

The Shilpa Sayura project, initiated under the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka’s (ICTA) e-Society Development Initiative gained international recognition last week when it won an i4d award at the eINDIA 2007 Conference in New Delhi , India. Shilpa Sayura was among seven ICT-based projects that won i4d Awards, for their contribution in the areas of digital literacy, electronic governance etc. The awards were given out during the valedictory session held on 2nd August, 2007. Central Informatics Organization (CIO), Government of Bahrain, and GDCO, Sudan were amongst the award winners. The project initiated by eFusion (Pvt) Ltd as a community ...

Members of all Ceylon graduate teachers’ Union have changed their earlier decision to keep away from marking answer scripts of students sitting the GCE A/Level examination, which commenced on Monday (06). These teachers had earlier taken a decision to boycott the marking of papers, as a means of winning their trade union rights. Now they have decided not to make their own students, the victims of their trade union struggle. The Union said there are more than one hundred thousand graduate teachers who prepare the students for the A.L Examination. The services of about ten thousand graduate teachers are necessary to ...

Prof. Nandasena Ratnapala, the down to earth sociologist has passed away yesterday, Daily News reports.  Prof. Ratnapala is better known for his research on the life of beggars, done by himself disguised as a beggar. He is also one of the pioneers in popularising sociology among masses, through his well readable articles to Sinhala newspapers.  Apart from to Sociology, Prof. Ratnapala's contribution is seen in many other spheres in the form of books written both in Sinhala and English.     

Yesterday the leader of the opposition raised talarm about the proposed criteria for admissions to schools and accused the minister of trying to hide behind the courts without carrying out his manadated responsibility of  drafting an admission policy. Right on Ranil. Keep the pressure on but please don't make this a political football. I have seen first hand your legislative skills and your commitment to education in, for example, the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission Act and the accompanying National apprentice and Industiral Training Act. Please stay away from the streets. Raise your voice in parliament and  give these simpletons in ...

London: Four Indian education institutions figure in the latest world university rankings, which continue to be topped by the universities of Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, for their strengths in teaching and research. The four Indian institutions are the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Delhi University (DU).  The IITs rank 57th in the world's top 200 universities list and the IIMs rank 68th. The JNU comes 183rd in the last. The Times Higher Education Supplement, an authoritative journal in academia, announced the third edition of the rankings. In the list of ...

While we in Sri Lanka make big noises about reintroducing history to the school curriculum, in UK they plan to take history out for A/Ls.    Does history matter anymore? If so why? If not why? It would be an interesting topic to discuss.    This is what came in BBC today:    The future of history as an A-level is being threatened with replacement by "soft subjects" like media studies, the head of an examiners' body has said.  Katherine Tattersall of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, said that history was in decline as it was not compulsory for pupils over 14.  She said it was ...