India-Lanka MoU on Smart Class Rooms in Plantation Schools
A Memorandum of Understanding on ‘Establishment of 60 Smart Classrooms in Selected Schools’ in the plantation regions of Sri Lanka, with grant assistance of LKR 508 million from the Government of India, was signed and exchanged by the High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka H.E. Santosh Jha and Secretary, Ministry of Plantation and Community Infrastructure Mr B.K. Prabhath Chandrakeerthi.
The project envisages the establishment of 60 smart classrooms for students in 48 schools in Nuwara Eliya and six schools each in Kandy and Badulla Districts identified by the Government of Sri Lanka. The initiative will enhance knowledge-impartment at the schools, bring learning benefits to the students, and promote information and communications technology integration in these schools.
With a development cooperation portfolio with Sri Lanka of over $5 billion, India’s people-centric development assistance initiatives in virtually all major sectors are positively impacting the day-to-day lives of Sri Lankans across all 25 districts of the country.
Establishing smart classrooms would be yet another initiative in line with the numerous past and ongoing development partnership projects of India in Sri Lanka in the education sector.
A selection of a few instances would include setting up English language laboratories in all provinces of the country;
establishment and renovation of auditoriums at numerous institutions across the country, including the Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Auditorium at Ruhuna University;
construction of a multi-ethnic tri-lingual school at Polonnaruwa in the North Central Province; renovation works at over 100 schools in the Northern Province; supply of 110 buses to educational institutions across the island;
support to vocational training institutions; establishment of smart classrooms and computer labs in 200 schools in the Southern Province; financial assistance to students at the University of Jaffna and Eastern University Batticaloa from economically weaker sections of society, among many others.
Diplomatic Letters were recently exchanged by the Governments of India and Sri Lanka for doubling the grant support of the Government of India to a project of up-gradation of 9 plantation schools.
A 3-month teacher-training program in STEM subjects for plantation schools was also conducted recently under the multi-sectoral grant assistance of INR 750 million announced last year to mark 200 years of the arrival of the Indian-origin Tamil community to Sri Lanka. Over 2000 teachers in plantation schools in Sri Lanka benefitted from the program.