Entrepreneurship and financial literacy will be introduced into the Grade 6 curriculum from 2027, Prime Minister and Education Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya has announced.

The aim is to raise financial literacy among younger Sri Lankans, protect them from financial fraud, and draw more of the population into the country’s productive economic activity, the Daily Mirror reported.

The Prime Minister made the announcement on Tuesday at an event at Isurupaya, the Ministry of Education premises, held to recognise winners of the first All-Island Commerce Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Skills Competition and to launch activity-based learning centres for commerce education.

From a stream subject to a life skill

Commercial education in Sri Lanka has largely been confined to students following the Commerce stream at G.C.E. Ordinary Level and Advanced Level. Under the change, it will be taught as a broader life skill across the school system from Grade 6.

Dr. Amarasuriya said improving financial literacy at a national level would help people make informed financial decisions and protect themselves from financial scams.

She said the government did not intend to turn everyone into an entrepreneur. It was essential, she said, to encourage a larger section of the population to take an active part in economic activity in order to strengthen a production-based economy.

She also stressed the need to develop entrepreneurs who go beyond profit-making — demonstrating environmental awareness, humane values and social responsibility.

100 learning centres in three phases

Alongside the curriculum change, a programme to establish regional learning centres was launched to make commerce education more practical and activity-based.

A total of 100 centres are planned across the country in three phases between 2026 and 2028. The first phase, scheduled for this year, will establish 25 centres covering all 25 districts.

Several supplementary educational resources covering basic commerce subjects were also launched, together with a collection of modules introducing new teaching and learning methods.

The all-island competition, organised for the first time by the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education, assessed students’ commercial knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. Winning students received awards and certificates from the Prime Minister.

Context

The move fits a reform sequence already under way. Verified coverage this desk reviewed shows the Cabinet approved the continuation of education reforms for Grades 2 and 6 in 2027, and that the Prime Minister has previously flagged a new subject being added to the curriculum from Grade 6 through Grade 9. Those filings predate this desk’s source-freshness window and are cited here as background with that caveat.

Financial literacy has been a recurring theme for the Prime Minister: earlier Daily Mirror coverage reported her putting the national financial literacy rate at 58%, and she has appeared at the Colombo Stock Exchange to promote financial literacy and investor education.

Not reported

The filing does not say what the new Grade 6 content will be called, how many periods a week it will occupy, or what it will replace in a curriculum the Ministry has described as already crowded. It does not state whether teachers will be recruited or existing staff retrained, what the programme will cost, or where the 25 first-phase centres will be sited within each district. It does not say whether the Grade 6 subject will continue into higher grades, or how the change interacts with the existing O/L and A/L Commerce streams. No figure is given for the number of students who entered the all-island competition.

On sourcing: this report rests on a single fresh verified source, the Daily Mirror. A search across NewsFirst, Island, Daily FT, Hiru News, Daily News and news.lk returned the earlier Cabinet and curriculum filings noted above rather than a same-day report of Tuesday’s Isurupaya event. A government news item on Grade 6 reforms for 2027 was returned by search but redirected when fetched, so its publication date could not be established and it has not been used as a source.