• Annual enrolment to more than double within 2 years
• 50,000 placements earmarked for ‘Aswesuma’ beneficiary families
• Economic development officers to raise awareness in rural areas
• Training curricula to be revised to match foreign job market demand
• Infrastructure upgrades planned to modernise vocational institutes

The Government plans to increase the annual student intake at vocational training institutes from 75,000 to 175,000, while also upgrading training infrastructure and revising course curricula to better prepare youth to meet the demands of the foreign job market.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, Deputy Minister of Vocational Education Nalin Hewage revealed that the Government had commenced an initiative aimed at increasing the number of students enrolled in vocational training institutions in order to increase the skilled workforce of the country.

Elaborating further on the initiative, he said: “Usually, around 100,000 students are enrolled in vocational training institutions linked to the ministry. We have now taken steps to increase this number to around 175,000.”

He claimed that the Government intended to fully implement this initiative within two years. 

Hewage explained that they would be looking to earmark 50,000 of these placements in vocational training institutes for students from families receiving ‘Aswesuma.’

He added that although the vocational training institutes under the ministry offered valuable and useful courses, they had faced challenges in attracting young people from rural areas due to their limited awareness of the opportunities available at these institutions.

Therefore, the Deputy Minister stated that they planned to utilise the more than 14,000 economic development officers assigned to each grama niladhari division to educate the youth and raise awareness about higher educational opportunities available to them.

He further stated that they were seeking to modernise the existing vocational training system to meet the aspirations of today’s youth, revealing that a study had already been initiated on the requirements of the foreign job market in order to identify areas with demand and train local youth accordingly.