Education Ministry to introduce school boards

A new system of introducing school boards aimed at improving administration in all State-run schools will be introduced soon, Education Minister Susil Premajayantha told Education Times.

The zonal education director will head the school board which will include one Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service (SLEAS) officer, 10 directors in charge of various divisions, and other officials including Public Health Inspectors, Police and a principal from a technical college in the area.

Some 25 schools will be managed by a school board, covering all 10,126 State-run schools across the country.

Minister Premajayantha said that the objective would be to improve the administration of the schools by overcoming the current administration system.

The annual plan of each school will be taken over by the school board, and it would oversee the implementation of the projects after making an assessment on which of the projects should be given priority.

The Ministry is to make available a separate budget for the school boards, with which they would be able to allocate money for essential repairs, maintenance, utility bills payments and other priority work.

Minister Premajayantha said another objective was to ensure that allocations by the Ministry are made available without a delay and used efficiently.

Advisor to the minister Prof Gunapala Nanayakkara, said that school supervision will be carried out through the boards, and some 4,000 advisors will be assigned to these school boards.

He said 54 such officers will be assigned to the boards. The schools board will also be responsible for overseeing the functions of the teachers.

In addition, the boards will be entrusted with teacher deployment, and will be able to intervene to fill teacher vacancies.