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Education experts in restructured NIE: DG
View(s):The National Institute of Education (NIE) will be re-structured with the NIE Council to include Education sector experts representing the North and East, the Estate sector and the Business Community, said the new NIE Director General (DG), Prof Gunapala Nanayakkara.
“The NIE needs to be revamped. There is a lack of administrative control and is experiencing obstacles common to public administration. Changes in attitude, adapting to change of duties, lack of factual analysis, poor in action, evading accountability and waste of resources should be addressed,” he said. Prof. Nanayakkara said there is a lot of idling human resources, with most of them not having job descriptions.
The new NIE DG said he has been requested to submit a performance report within a month, which will also include proposals for improvement.
“For the moment, we are focusing on Key Result Areas (KRA) to implement a National Education Policy, bringing all departments in the Education sector under one policy, increasing student performance, teacher and principal service improvement and welfare, and implementing effective projects,” he said. Prof Nanayakkara said waste of resources can be curbed by organising duties as projects and allocating funds on a project basis.
“Human Rights Education will be one of the focuses with the aim of breaking the language barrier among schoolchildren. If such subjects are made compulsory, students have to learn one another’s language. Training of teachers on this will also be of priority,” he said.
According to him, the rural school Education system needs immediate attention. Hence, teacher benefits will be considered to encourage teachers to remain in remote areas.
“At present, teacher transfers to remote areas are given without due consideration.
Teachers should be given proper accommodation, special motivational allowance, recognizing their families and education of their children. Therefore, a special plan will be put into action,” he added.
He said career oriented workshops, tests and training, will be given to secondary schoolchildren as well as students who have failed the Ordinary Level exam.
He said the present NIE website needs to be more user-friendly and is not interactive.
“There is a need to add the latest news, research abstracts and more activities to attract schoolchildren, teachers, parents and researchers,” he added.
- Nadia Fazlulhaq