Over 100,000 kids shipped into Colombo everyday for school?

December 17th, 2007 - By Sujata Gamage

If Colombo is home to you, did you know that 50% or so of homes in Colombo are in tenement gardens or are illegal shanties. The children from these homes attend neighborhood schools of poor quality. These children attend a school close to home and go home without causing congestion or pollution. Not so with the National schools or private schools. There are about 210,000 kids attending schools in Colombo. Of these roughly two thirds or 140,000 attend National schools or Private schools (See lists below). According one estimate about 28,000 kids are shipped into Colombo from the Kaduwela area alone. It ...

A year since Professor Raveendranath went missing at SLAAS

December 10th, 2007 - By Sujata Gamage

Let us recall this incident somewhat more in detail. Prof. S. Raveendranath, Vice Chancellor of the Eastern University, Sri Lanka (EUSL) was abducted on the 15th of December 2006, not from any part of the Eastern province but rather from a high security area in Colombo in the midst of his attending a science forum at the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) auditorium at Vidya Mawatha, Colombo 7. His distraught family members immediately lodged a complaint with the Dehiwala police. Since then, despite numerous appeals to investigate the circumstances of his disappearance, Prof Raveendranath (an acute ...

A Level Drama Classes

December 10th, 2007 - By Sujata Gamage

We received this ad from two leading theater personalities in Colombo. We are posting it here partly because of the insights it gives about our education system. Do our A/L kids really learn all this cool stuff? Can schools indeed outsource theater teaching to private professionals? Imagine the difference between book learning and learning from professionals. If anybody is looking for a gift that lasts, consider sponsoring a talented youngster from a poor government school in our midst in Colombo for Rs: 2500 a month. The Forum can get you a list and coordinate. For Local Advanced Level Examination in ...

Sri Kanth walks tall in the IT world

December 3rd, 2007 - By

            If you think people with disabilities never get ahead in life, think again! Some of Sri Lanka's leaders in fast-track industries, including Information & Communications Technology (ICT), come under this category. On August 1, this year in New Delhi, 25 ICT champions representing countries including Sri Lanka were honoured as Fellows of the Jamshetji Tata National Virtual Academy (NVA), along with 600 Indian grassroots leaders, by Prof. M.S. Swaminathan and Prof. Rajshekharan Pillai, the Vice Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University.  According to one Indian newspaper report, “One of the Fellows, a Nanasala operator from Sri Lanka, informed that ...