Sunday Times E-Paper

System for enrolling students in intermediary grades at national schools to go digital

The programme to enrol students for intermediary classes in national schools will be digitalised, to ensure transparency in the scheme, a senior Education Ministry official said.

Under the programme, the Ministry website will need to be updated by national schools every fortnight about available vacancies.

School principals will also be required to provide the reasons for enrolling students in which they will need to state under what category the applicant has been accepted.

Accordingly, principals will need to mention if a student was accepted due to a transfer of a parent, and currently students are entitled to 40 per cent of marks if they shifted schools due to a transfer.

The ministry official said even though there are 373 national schools in the country, problems regarding admissions have arisen in about 50 national schools in main towns such as Colombo and Kandy.

“With plans to increase the number of national schools up to 1,204 there needs to be a proper mechanism in place to admit students. Therefore this new system is being introduced. The objective of this system is to minimise corruption,” he said.

He said the ministry had taken action in one incident where a senior Education officer had obtained Rs 800,000 through another officer to admit a student to a Southern province school.

The senior officer had been relieved of his responsibilities, while the officer who acted as an agent to collect the money had been transferred.

In another case an agent had been used to obtain Rs two million to admit a child to a national school in Colombo.

The official said with the new mechanism, parents will be able to find out vacancies for intermediary classes on the website and apply.

Intermediary classes include grade six up to the O/L classes.

EDUCATION TIMES

en-lk

2021-11-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://sundaytimes.pressreader.com/article/283012583012516

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