Radical changes in the education system will be implemented from this year, said Education Minister Akila Viraj Kariyawasam. He said so at the national ceremony for textbook distribution held at Ananda Sasthralaya, Kotte recently.
The minister stated that arrangements have been made to establish an independent supervisory council, make the 13 year continuous school education compulsory, provide an insurance to each school child, provide computer tabs to all students and teachers of G.C.E. Advanced Level classes and install syllabuses and learning facilities at computer tabs.
Forty two million textbooks were printed this time for the benefit of over 4.3 million schoolchildren. Under the program, 410 categories of textbooks were printed and the total expenditure for printing and distributing school textbooks was Rs. 5,415 million. New syllabuses have been introduced to Grade Two and Grade Eight from this year and 53 new textbooks were issued to all schools, the minister said.
The Education Publications Department has taken steps to prepare electronic textbooks for several selected subjects in the future. Arrangements have been made to provide e-books in Sinhala and Tamil medium for Motor Mechanics and Bio-Chemical Science under the Technology stream at G.C.E. Advanced Level and for Science in Sinhala, Tamil and English medium at G.C.E. Ordinary Level. Soft copies of all textbooks issued by the Education Publication Department can be downloaded from the Education Publications Department website.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Harsha de Silva, Secretary of Education Sunil Hettiarachchi, State Secretary of Education Thissa Hewawithana, Commissioner General of Education of Publications I.M.K.B. Illangasingha and Director General of the National Institute of Education Dr. Jayanthi Gunasekara participated in the textbook distributing ceremony.