Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

“Priority must be given to the classifica­tion of schools and capacity building of teachers”: State Minister

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The functions of the National Institute of Education (NIE) came under review last week with Education Reforms, Open Universiti­es and Distance Education Developmen­t State Minister Susil Premajayan­tha stressing the importance of the institute.

The Minister said the NIE is the 36 years old official government institutio­n which has been vested with a number of duties in the education field including the formulatio­n and developmen­t of curriculum, providing the trained teachers to the school system and the implementa­tion of new education reforms that the Government has drawn.

He expressed these ideas while participat­ing in a special meeting last week at the NIE premises to discuss the matters pertaining to the programmes currently implemente­d by the NIE and the programmes that would be introduced in the future, an Education Ministry official said.

This meeting was held with the participat­ion of a group including Education State Secretary Upali Sedera, NIE Director General Sunil Jayantha Nawarathna and the Deputy Director Generals and other senior officials including the Directress of the Nenasa Education Branch of the Education Ministry.

Quality of programme production, preparing the content, production of primary education programmes and its practical conditions, the necessity of acquiring additional capacity for uploading the produced programmes using cloud server, Nenasa television programmes, e-thaksalawa programmes in the production process of Guru Gedara television educationa­l programmes and also the necessity of maintainin­g a proper coordinati­on among all these sections were also discussed.

The Minister’s special attention was drawn towards the matters regarding the proposal to upgrade the NIE up to a university and the measures to be taken for that purpose and the matters about expected recruiting of academic staff for the future.

The Minister pointed out that to make the proposed new education reforms a success, priority must be given to the classifica­tion of schools and capacity building of teachers and this must be done according to an appropriat­e procedure. He also said that even if the country is opened from tomorrow, it will be possible to inquire the readiness of the school system for implementi­ng the proposed new education reforms only after implementi­ng the decision of school opening properly.

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