10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. (Dr.) Madhura Senevirathna

Jathika Jana balawegaya· Nuwara - Eliya· 23 January 2026 ·Oral question: Oral Questions: Heda Oya Irrigation, Thondaman Foundation, Schools, Hydropower, Sugar Factories, Ragama Town, Monaragala Lands, Badulla Cooperatives

Education
AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Hon. (Dr.) Madhura Senevirathna stated that school rationalization is based on standardized cluster-level criteria, including access, transport, population density and divisional and district committee decisions, rather than student numbers alone. He said selected cluster schools will be developed with full facilities, including sports grounds, infrastructure and A/L streams, to serve surrounding students. He also clarified that smart boards are not mandatory under the modular system, that schools should not collect funds for them, and that the Government has allocated funds to network about 6,000 schools and provide smart classroom facilities.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 On school rationalization: we are not deciding solely by student count. We develop a selected school per cluster with full facilities—sports grounds, infrastructure, full A/L streams—and ensure access for surrounding students, based on standardized criteria, road access, transport, population density, and committee decisions at divisional and district levels. On smart boards: under the modular system, smart boards are not mandatory. Even with rollout this year, they are not required. Schools should not collect funds for smart boards. The Government has already allocated funds to network about 6,000 schools and provide smart classroom facilities. The Government will provide necessary facilities; fundraising for smart boards is inappropriate.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Friday, 23 January 2026 ·No. 23290 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
/lk/speeches/14296

Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Madhura Senevirathna. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 23 January 2026. No. 23290. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/14296