The Government has still not made adequate preparations to introduce the new education reforms from next year (2027), including the training of teachers who will be required to implement the changes, the Ceylon Teachers' Union (CTU) claimed.

CTU General Secretary Joseph Stalin said the Government was planning to introduce the new reforms for Grades Two and Six from next year, but the necessary preparations were not being carried out properly. He said teacher training for the reforms was still progressing slowly and questioned whether the Government would be ready to implement the changes as planned.

“These reforms are coming next year for Grades Two and Six anyway, but the training of teachers for this is still happening very slowly. These reforms are a continuation of reforms introduced during the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration that were later abandoned without being implemented."

Stalin also said the union had not seen sufficient progress on the policy framework that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had asked the National Education Commission (NEC) to prepare for the reforms. “We do not know whether the NEC has completed it yet. It has still not been presented to the public or even discussed publicly,” he said.

He further said the Government should first address the practical problems already affecting the existing education system before introducing reforms that did not provide solutions to those problems. “There are a number of practical crises in the existing education system. If reforms are introduced without providing solutions to these problems, then the Government needs to think about them again.”  

Education Ministry Secretary, Nalaka Kaluwewa said recently that education reforms that were halted following problems with the Grade Six English language modules were expected to be rolled out from January 2027.