As there are a limited number of GCE O/L Examination answer sheet review centres, arrangements have been made to give a daily allowance of Rs. 2,000 to the answer-sheets examiners who come from a long distance. As there are many regular examination centres set up all over the country such problems do not arise for the GCE Ordinary Level Examination answer sheet examiners. However, after considering the requests made by the Teachers’ Trade Unions, Education Minister Dr. Susil Premajayantha said that they were also given two days’ official duty leave. In addition, a Cabinet memorandum has already been submitted regarding increasing the daily allowance of GCE Ordinary Level Examination answer sheets examiners.
Further commenting on this, the Minister mentioned that 5,400 graduates will be newly recruited into the teaching service and 1,700 of them will be recruited into national schools and that an open competitive examination will be held in the near future according to the teaching service constitution.
Also, the Minister said that Cabinet approval has been sought for the recruitment of teaching assistants to meet the shortage of teachers in the plantations.
The Minister also mentioned that the teachers should not only pay more attention on removing salary anomalies, but must also pay more attention to the education of the children and take extra time teaching for the missed learning workload to cover the missed teaching sessions, otherwise the children’s confidence in school education may be damaged.
The Minister made these comments while speaking to the media in Colombo.