By Saman Indrajith
Minister of Education Susil Premajayantha on Tuesday (05) told Parliament that he would take steps to recruit over 2,000 university lecturers to fill vacancies in the university system.
Minister Premajayantha said that the universities needed about 12,000 lecturers to operate optimally and that there were now only about 9,000 teachers.
Funds had been allocated from the previous budget for recruiting 854 lecturers to replace those who had retired or left the country, the Minister said.
“Next year, we will recruit the rest,” he said.
There were 864 estate sector schools with 13,541 teachers and 212,265 students.
“We will recruit 2,535 more teachers from among the educated estate youth,” the Minister said, noting that there were 42,328 vacancies in the teacher service but 14,935 teachers had already been recruited, at the provincial level.
“At the centre we have recruited 20,000 but each time we do this, some people resort to legal action. Once this is solved, we will have around 35,000 new teachers. Another 7,000 teachers will pass out of training schools in 2024.”
The Education Minister said that in 2024 over 4,000 primary schools would be upgraded to have pre-primary school facilities.
Premajayantha said that only 292,000 children entered schools annually due to a drop in the the birth rate. Ten years ago, about 340,000 children enrolled in Grade One,” he said, adding that the government would establish a branch of the Indian Institutes of Technology here in 2024. Premajayantha said the salary anomalies faced by teachers would be addressed in 2025.
“The government will increase the salaries of all government servants. If we are to solve the salary issues of teachers, we will need an extra Rs 40 billion in 2024. We need Rs 15 billion for free textbooks. We need Rs 16 billion for school meals and Rs 2.5 billion for shoes. These are also pressing issues. I think the trade unions are aware of this situation,” he said.
