The Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU) says the government is not adequately prepared to implement the education reforms due to take effect next year, and that teacher training for them is still incomplete.
The reforms are to be introduced for Grade 1 and Grade 6 from next year. CTU General Secretary Joseph Stalin said the rollout will proceed on schedule but that the preparatory work behind it has not kept pace.
“Although these reforms are scheduled to be introduced next year, the reforms for Grade 1 and Grade 6 will go ahead as planned. However, the training of teachers for this purpose is still progressing slowly,” he said in remarks reported by Ada Derana.
The missing policy framework
Stalin said the President had recently instructed the National Education Commission to prepare a policy framework specifically for the reforms, but that the union has no visibility of it.
“We do not know whether the National Education Commission has completed it yet. It has still not been presented to the public, nor has there been any discussion about it,” he said.
The sequencing is the union’s substantive complaint: a policy framework commissioned while the curriculum it is meant to govern is already scheduled for classrooms next year arrives after the fact rather than before it.
A continuation, the union says
Stalin characterised the reforms as inherited rather than new, describing them as “clearly a continuation of the reforms introduced by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government” and “an extension of reforms that were left incomplete without being implemented.”
He said the reforms were being carried forward without a proper plan, that there were no clear indications of adequate preparation, and that the situation had developed into a major crisis. He argued the existing school system already faces several practical problems, and that the government should reconsider introducing reforms that do not address them.
Ada Derana did not carry a response from the Ministry of Education or the National Education Commission, and did not report a date by which teacher training is expected to be completed.
The CTU has been a frequent critic of education administration this year, including over a Grade 5 scholarship examination irregularity in Kegalle.
No other verified newsroom had filed the union’s statement at the time of writing.
