Schoolchildren will carry lighter bags under a new modular education system, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya told Parliament on Thursday, the Daily Mirror reported.
Amarasuriya, who also holds the education portfolio, said the system will use smaller textbooks and activity books, with some materials kept in classrooms rather than carried to and from school each day.
She ruled out replacing books with devices. “We cannot totally digitise education, but we will see to it that children have a lesser number of textbooks,” she said.
The reforms are intended to make education more convenient for students while reducing the physical burden of carrying several textbooks daily, she said.
A first concrete measure in a reform programme short on specifics
The announcement puts a tangible change against a reform programme that has so far been described mostly in general terms.
Two days earlier, at an Education Ministry event in Colombo, Amarasuriya and Deputy Minister Madura Seneviratne set out the reforms as a shift in teaching and learning methods rather than a change of curricula, with a widened focus on inclusive education. Our report noted that neither speaker gave a timetable or named the measures involved.
The modular system, smaller textbooks and classroom-held materials are the first specific mechanisms attached to the programme in this reporting cycle.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not say when the modular system takes effect, which grades it starts with, or whether it is tied to the wider reform timetable. It does not say what a “module” replaces in practice, how many textbooks a pupil currently carries or what the target is.
It does not report what prompted the statement — whether it answered a question in the House, and if so from whom — or whether any member responded. It gives no cost, and no indication of how materials kept in classrooms would be stored or funded.
Sourcing note
The Daily Mirror is the only verified newsroom to have filed on these remarks at the time of writing. NewsFirst’s latest listing and Hiru News’s English listing carried nothing on them, and Ada Derana returned a CloudFront 403 across the whole domain throughout this cycle. A search of the verified outlets returned only earlier coverage of the education reform programme.
