Sri Lankan government and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) have jointly initiated a program to assist 1.6 million COVID-19 pandemic-affected primary schoolchildren to catch up on their learning.
Those students have been affected by prolonged school closures and sporadic disruptions to their education over the past three years, the Minister of Education Susil Premajayantha said on Thursday.
According to a national assessment the ministry did, 85 percent of grade 3 children are not achieving minimum proficiency in literacy and numeracy.
The minister said Sri Lanka currently allocates less than 2 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education, which falls well below the international benchmark of 4 to 6 percent of GDP.
“There is an urgent need to increase the national budget allocation for education, especially for primary grades, where we need to boost foundational learning for children, while also ensuring the implementation of vital education reforms so that we can build the solid human resource skills needed to support the country’s development,” said Premajayantha.
In July, the Education Ministry and UNICEF held a special briefing on “Learning Recovery” to leverage the support of development partners, while more technical-level workshops were held across nine provinces to identify gaps and prioritize actions.
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