• Ministry Secretary rejects union claim

Rejecting the Ceylon Teachers’ Union’s (CTU) claim that the Government cannot recruit 23,000 teachers this year, Education Ministry Secretary Nalaka Kaluwewa yesterday said the recruitment process was already at its final stage and that all appointments would be made before the end of 2026.

Speaking to The Daily Morning, Kaluwewa dismissed as “completely false” the union’s claim that the recruitment was impractical as the answer scripts of the competitive examination had not yet been evaluated. “That is completely untrue. The allegation that recruiting 23,000 teachers is not practical is completely false. That recruitment will be done this year. They (trade unions) can see how it is being carried out,” he said.

Responding to the CTU’s claim that the examination answer scripts had not even been taken up for evaluation, he said there was no possibility for such a situation to exist several months after an examination had been held. “How can they say that we have not even started marking answer scripts? Does a Ministry work in such a short-sighted manner? Do you hold an examination and wait for three or four months without marking papers? These allegations are completely false. I reject that allegation 100%,” he said.

The Secretary further said the recruitment process had now reached its final stage and that the Ministry was already preparing for the interviews. “We are even conducting training sessions these days on how to conduct the interviews to select those who get through the examination,” he said.

The CTU recently claimed that the country’s teacher shortage could exceed 50,000 by the end of the year, citing more than 40,000 existing vacancies and the possibility of around 10,000 teachers retiring after receiving the third installment of the 2026 Budget salary increase. CTU President Priyantha Fernando also questioned how the Government could complete the recruitment of 23,000 teachers from among those who sat for the recently-held examinations. 

He said the Department of Examinations had not yet begun evaluating the answer scripts and that the evaluation of the GCE Advanced Level examination would have to be completed first. He also said the GCE Ordinary Level examination would add to the workload of the Examinations Department, and that interviews for the teacher recruitment could take more than a month if 69,000 candidates had to be called under the usual procedure. He therefore claimed that the recruitment could not be completed before March 2027.