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

The Hon. (Dr.) Madhura Senevirathna

Jathika Jana balawegaya· Nuwara - Eliya· 14 March 2025 ·Oral question: Oral Questions and Answers

Education
AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Hon. (Dr.) Madhura Senevirathna argued that higher education pathways should be viewed beyond universities, noting that many students enter vocational institutions such as SLIATE, which currently has about 26,000 students and around 7,500 annual progressions. He stated that vocational education is being aligned with global trends and higher education, and contended that students choosing private, state, or vocational routes should not be treated as a significant loss of opportunity. He also challenged the assumption that students go abroad solely because of degree requirements.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Karunanayake, we consider not only universities. I spoke about universities, but a large number also enter vocational institutions. About 26,000 study at SLIATE presently, and around 7,500 proceed annually. We are focusing on aligning vocational education with global trends and with higher education.

¶ 02 Your argument is understood. If you view this as a loss of opportunity, proportionally the loss is minimal. The student chooses a private university, state university, or vocational track; what appears a loss is not actually a loss of opportunity.

¶ 03 Another point: there is a notion that students go abroad only due to degree requirements.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Friday, 14 March 2025 ·No. 1744281136023320 ·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/26403

Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Madhura Senevirathna. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 14 March 2025. No. 1744281136023320. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/26403