Education Minister Dr. Susil Premajayantha told Parliament yesterday (5) that Rs.55 billion more has been allocated for the education sector for 2024 compared to last year.
The Education Minister said this while joining the debate on the budget of the Education Ministry. The Minister said that they are working to provide textbooks, uniforms, lunch and shoes to schoolchildren which are essential matters of education.
The Minister announced that the new school term 2024 will start on February 19 and before that, uniforms, textbooks and shoes will be provided to the selected schools.
The Minister said that his goal is to provide free lunch to all children by 2030. For that, he hopes to get assistance from the World Food Programme.
The Education Minister said that in 2022, there were many problems without printing paper, but 40 percent of the textbooks required for next year have already been printed. The Minister said that the textbooks printed by the private sector will also be printed in another two weeks. Accordingly, all the books can be distributed before the school starts on February 19.
The uniforms for next year have already been ordered. Distribution of shoes started yesterday. By December 27th, the school shoes will be provided. 47,000 shoes will be distributed in this way.
The Grade five Scholarship Examination results have been released within a month. For the first time, 13,880 students have obtained a passes for all the subjects at the GCE O/L examination. Last week, the cut off marks for universities were released.
The Education Minister said that the recruitment of teachers for plantation schools has also started. The programme is expected to start next year. He said that the distribution of an additional set of uniforms to estate schools will begin in the next two weeks.
He said that 14,935 teachers are to be recruited at the provincial level before the end of this year. He said that all the schools are expected to be digitized and that the Chinese government has received allocations for that. Rs.10,000 million has been allocated for school renovation.74 schools have been identified as having dilapidated buildings.
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