23 October 2021 12:00 am
School attendance both when it comes to children and teachers will improve within the coming weeks, Leader of the House and Minister of Education Dinesh Gunawardene told Parliament yesterday.
“It took weeks for the schools to come back to normal after the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019 and after the first wave of COVID in 2020. We expect a similar trend this time as well and thereby school attendance will improve within a few weeks,” the Minister said.
“Around 52,000 children and more than 8000 teachers attended schools on October 21 while padlocks had to be broken in some schools for the children and staff to get in,” he said.
“Most satisfactory attendance of school principals were recorded from the North and East which was around 69 percent while the lowest attendance of principals was recorded from the Western and Eastern provinces. Around 33 percent of the principals were from the Southern province while principal attendance in Western province was 34 percent,” he added.
The overall children’s attendance was 16 percent and teacher attendance was 26 percent on October 21, according to the Minister.
“All political parties should support us to normalise the schools, as it is our own children who attend schools. We are all parents,” he said.