The awarding of graduate teacher appointments to the Sri Lanka Teacher Service (2018) required to teach advanced level vocational subjects at national and provincial schools was held at Temple Trees under the patronage of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The Premier said 13 years of continuous education for all students has now become a reality and all children would be able to achieve success in any field they preferred to study disregarding their performances at the GCE O/L exam. “Unemployment has become a burning issue in society due to the absence of labour market oriented education,” the PM said.
“Wasting our country’s human resource based on their O/L results is a crime.To overcome this situation, the government is dedicated to ensure 13 years of continuous education for all students,”the Prime Minister said.
He said the Education Ministry has already introduced a new subject stream to GCE A/L syllabus following the education system in Finland. The project was implemented as a pilot project from October 2017. “If we consider O/L as an examination which decides the higher education or advanced level education, most of the students will have to end their education after 11 years,” he said.
According to the agreement signed with Finland, it was necessary to recruit new teachers who can teach vocational subjects. But no such teachers available in the teaching service. So the subject Minister proposed to recruit new teachers who had studied vocational subjects in school.
Therefore, the group of 1,150 teachers who received their appointments will undergo special teacher training in vocational training.“As the first group of vocational education teachers of the country and the Asia, the newly recruited teachers have a responsibility of making this programme a success. The future of this endeavour completely on the success of this first group,” the Premier said.
Addressing the occasion, Education Minister Akila Viraj Kariyawasam said all these teachers were selected through a competitive examination.“The 13 years of guaranteed education programme will allow students, who do not pass the GCE Ordinary Level to proceed to Advanced Level, to pursue vocational studies to succeed in future,” the minister said.Under the programme 26 new vocational subjects will be introduced for students who do not pass the GCE Ordinary Level.
The government has allocated Rs.5 billion to implement the ‘13 Years Certified Education’ covering the entire school system from 2019.
Source : news.lk
