8 September 2020 07:13 am
At least 1.2 million youths and adults from the country’s population is still illiterate, Education Minister Prof. G.L. Pieris said.
He said the projects that were implemented to increase the literacy should be expanded.
“School-level access committees to provide sustainable solutions through the national education system should also be increased to achieve the 100% literacy,” the Minister said.
He said the countries like North Korea, Cuba, Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Philippine had obtained higher literacy rates.
“We should give sensitive attention to those countries literacy rates. These countries will explain a wide change of the education system," the Minister said.
The UNICEF Innovation Fund announced the global celebrations of International Literacy Day on September 8 under the theme 'Literacy teaching and learning in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond', especially on the role of educators and changing pedagogies.
The theme highlights literacy learning in a lifelong learning perspective, and therefore, mainly focuses on youth and adults. The recent COVID-19 crisis had been a stark reminder of the existing gap between policy discourse and reality.
A gap that already existed in the pre-COVID-19 era and negatively affects the learning of youth and adults, who have no or low literacy skills, and therefore, tend to face multiple disadvantages.
During this week's literacy celebration, the Education Ministry had advised all provincial educational secretaries, Provincial Educational directories and zonal education directors on conducting literacy programmes at the school level. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)