Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya has called for a deliberately small first phase in plans to digitise special education and expand assistive technology for learners with disabilities.
She chaired a high-level discussion on August 18 to plan the programme strategically, the Prime Minister’s Office said. The meeting stressed that the pilot must be planned in detail around sector-specific challenges, warning that a poorly designed rollout could leave devices and investment going to waste.
Four planning principles
The discussion set out the approach in four parts:
Small-scale pilot. Begin with a limited number of schools and devices to test, learn and refine implementation before any wider rollout.
Education reform integration. Embed the programme within reforms already under way, focusing initially on Grades 1, 2 and 6 and prioritising schools that either have basic infrastructure for children with disabilities or have been selected for improvement under the reform initiatives.
Focused scope. Address identified disabilities first rather than attempting to cover all learning difficulties at once, leaving room for gradual expansion.
Capacity and accessibility. Strengthen screening, educator training and accessibility standards so the technology is usable once it arrives.
Why the caution
Assistive technology programmes in schools commonly fail not on hardware but on the surrounding system — devices arriving without trained teachers, without screening to identify which children need them, or without accessibility standards to make the software usable. The emphasis on training, screening and standards addresses that risk directly, as does the instruction to prove the model in a handful of schools first.
Amarasuriya, who holds the education portfolio alongside the premiership, has overseen a run of digitalisation measures in the sector this year. The Ministry of Education recently released the 2027 school term calendar.
