The Hon. Upul Kithsiri
Hon. Upul Kithsiri raised concerns over significant vacancies in the Sri Lanka Principals’ Service, noting existing and prospective shortages due to retirements and officers covering duties outside the service. He asked whether younger officers could be recruited in greater numbers to Grade III and whether the process of filling vacancies could be expedited. He also sought action to address salary anomalies faced by senior teachers entering Principals’ Service Grade III, including possible interim payments until recalculations are completed.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Officers of Sri Lanka Principals’ Service: Details (Q. 1348/2025)
¶ 02 Thank you to the Hon. Deputy Minister for the reply.
¶ 03 My first supplementary: We have over 10,000 schools. Principals in Grades I, II and III plus Deputy Principals should number at least about 20,000. Yet, there are 3,152 vacancies, many nearing retirement, and around 2,500 are covering duties without being in the Principals’ Service—total prospective vacancies around 5,600. Many recruited to Grade III at ages 45–50 reach Grade II/I close to ages 56–58, leaving little service time. Can younger officers be recruited in greater numbers to Grade III and expedite filling vacancies?
¶ 04 My second supplementary: Longstanding issue—when Grade I or II teachers enter Principals’ Service Grade III, their salaries sometimes reduce compared to their previous teacher grade. When will this anomaly be rectified? Can an interim fair payment be made until recalculation, and can this be resolved expeditiously?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 22 January 2026 ·No. 23203 ·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/22415
Cite as: The Hon. Upul Kithsiri. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 22 January 2026. No. 23203. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/22415