Assurances for better Tamil textbooks

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 May 1999, 19:54 GMT]
The Director General of the National Institute of Education, Professor Lakshman Jayatilake, has assured a delegation from the Ceylon Tamil Teachers' Union (CTTU) that Tamil speaking representatives would be included in the Text Book Committee from the year 2001.

Professor Jayatilake further said that the National Institute of Education would get the services of well-known Tamil speaking scholars to write Tamil medium text books from 2001.

A delegation from Ceylon Tamil Teachers' Union met Professor Lakshman Jayatilake, Director General of the National Institute of Education on Wednesday.

The National Institute of Education is in charge of preparing all text books for Sinhala and Tamil media students and comes under the authority of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

Professor Lakshman Jayatilake is also the Chairman of the National Education Commission, appointed by the President of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Kumaratunga.

The new education policy that is currently being implemented with the assistance of the World Bank was drawn up by the National Education Commission.

The Deputy Director General of the National Institute of Education, Dr.Amara Gunasekara, the Assistant Director, Mr.K.Liyanage and the Director of Education (Tamil section), Mr.K.Subramaniam met the CTTU delegation with the Director General.

The CTTU delegation comprised of; the President, Mr.S. Kumarakuruthasan, the General Secretary, Mr. T. Mahasivam and the Administrative Secretary, Mr.S. Saravanapavananthan.

Tamil medium text books to be released in the year 2000 have already been prepared, ministry sources said.

However, Professor Lakshman Jayatilake assured the CTTU delegation that the N.I.E. would be making necessary arrangements for teacher-representatives to go through all text books already written to identify mistakes and other shortcomings before printing.

The grammatical and other mistakes found in Tamil medium text books already distributed to schools could be corrected in the next editions, the CTTU delegation was told.

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