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Education sector TUs to continue strike 

18 Jul 2021

  • Education Ministry to work on re-opening schools 
  • Ministry sets up over 2,000 learning centres  
By Yumiko Perera   Teachers across the island who withdrew from conducting online classes for students earlier last week over the arrest and quarantine of trade union activists, are to continue with the protest until their demands are met.  Citing that the Government has failed to provide necessary solutions to their issues promptly, speaking with The Sunday Morning, Ceylon Teachers’ Service Union General Secretary Mahinda Jayasinghe stated: "We would continue to protest until we are given proper solutions."  Meanwhile, speaking with The Sunday Morning, Education Ministry Secretary Prof. Kapila Perera reiterated that the Ministry is hoping to open schools soon.  He noted that several measures have been put forth to tackle the situation at hand, especially when it comes to distance education.  "Several programmes such as ‘Gurugedara’, ‘E-Thaksalawa’, and ‘Sathi Pasala’ have been introduced at the national and provincial levels to facilitate online education for students, and students can access these free of charge," he noted. "One of the main national programmes conducted by the Ministry is E-Thaksalawa, which has nearly 65,000 lessons, from grades one through 13. All learning material can be found on the website, and it focuses on self-leaning."  He further added that "Gurugedara", which is a television-based system, has a little over 6,000 lessons from grades three through 13, and is telecast in both Tamil and Sinhalese, and that lessons are conducted three days a week in Sinhalese, and three days in Tamil, 16 hours a day.  Prof. Perera further reiterated that they are currently in the process of recording lessons for grades one and two for this platform.  Furthermore, he added that the Ministry of Education has identified 2,096 centres where students do not have the right infrastructure to access the internet.  "We have identified nearly 3,400-odd schools that comprise 750,000 students that do not have access to the internet, so we have set up 2,096 makeshift places for them to access the internet and do their studies. This is currently commencing across several rural areas from 7.30 a.m. till 3.30 p.m., with a maximum number of 20 students per centre, as per the health guidelines," he noted.  Stating that nearly 99% of the teachers in the Colombo District have been vaccinated, and 87% of the teachers across the Western Province have been inoculated, he further elaborated that the Ministry of Education hopes to expedite the vaccine programmes for teachers and staff in order to re-open schools as soon as possible.  According to him, nearly 30% of the teachers and staff across the island have been vaccinated, thus far.  "Teachers and staff in provinces like Uva have not been inoculated yet, owing to the shortage in vaccinations, but the vaccination process for teachers began on 12 July and as of today (17), I believe that we have made great progress in that regard. After the teachers are fully immunised, we hope to re-open schools," he noted.


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