The President of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union S. Priyantha Fernando has lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) alleging that the authorities have not taken steps to ensure online education Though it is 4.3 million school children are unable to have proper education.
The President of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union S. Priyantha Fernando, the General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union Joseph Stalin appeared as the complainants and the Secretary to the Ministry of Education, North Central Provincial Ministry of Education and the North Central Provincial Department of Education were named as respondents.
The President of the Association handed over the complaint to the Coordinating Officer of the Regional Office of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka at Freeman Mawatha, Anuradhapura.
Commenting on the complaint, Chairman Priyantha Fernando said that schools were first closed on March 20, 2020 due to the Covid epidemic. Although schools are opened from time to time, about 4.3 million students have missed schooling.
By 2020, the number of school days was 203. Schools were held less than half of those days. As a result student in all provinces except the Western Province,
are unable to continue their education.
With the decision of allowing half of the children to a school, the students have missed 80 school days. Schools in the Western Province have been running for less than a month. Schools have been held for two days for the grade 1 students who entered the school in 2021.
With the closure of schools, the Ministry of Education has not implemented a proper program for distance learning (online). As a result students have missed the equal opportunity in education. But the authorities try to prove that the success of this system.
The letter submitted by the Chairman to the Human Rights Commission stated that the computer literacy rate in our country was 30.3 percent, 47.4 percent in urban areas, 28.5 percent in rural areas and 12.27 percent in the plantation sector. In addition, laptops account for 46 percent of the population.
The complaint to the Human Rights Commission has informed on a number of issues, including the signal status and huge cost for online education.
The Teachers’ Union and the Human Rights Commission (HRC) have requested the Ministry of Education to implement an effective system of education that is accessible to all instead of the government-initiated system of online education and to implement a system of online education that does not harass students, teachers and parents.
-Mahesh Wijesuriya from Anuradhapura-