Hon. Dayasiri Jayasekara, Attorney-at-Law

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Prime Minister for a very good answer.

¶ 02 Appropriate decisions have been taken against the offenders. However, the issue is this: what happened to the 319,000 innocent children who sat for the exam? The Supreme Court instructed that one of the three remedies proposed by your appointed committee be chosen as necessary. The three options were: remove the three questions and mark; award full marks for the three questions; or re-hold the exam. Many requested that the paper be re-administered. That did not happen. Under the adopted approach, two issues arise. The most capable children attempted those questions; even with compensatory marks, relatively lower-performing students have moved up. In some cases, students who did not answer those questions now have higher marks than those who did. That is one concern.

¶ 03 Second, ordinarily Grade 6 classes begin in January. You said children would be temporarily attached to schools. Tomorrow, 28th February, was the date planned. But cut-off marks have not been issued. Therefore, all children have been admitted en masse to schools; some schools have no chairs, desks or space. As of this morning, cut-off marks still have not been released. Today is 27th February. This task has not started. I request that immediate action be taken. Rather than appointing a committee and taking its recommendation, a decision should have been taken to re-hold the exam immediately. That was not done. Consequently, there is a problem: no classrooms, no chairs, yet students have filled schools because cut-off marks are pending. Will you act immediately?