The Hon. Mujibur Rahuman
Mujibur Rahuman questioned the Government’s policy allowing 42 students in Grade 1 classes, arguing it contradicts the Supreme Court’s 2012 direction to reduce class sizes to 35 and worsens overcrowding in popular schools while reducing enrolment in smaller schools. He asked why the Government has not restored the 35-student cap previously implemented progressively under former Minister Akila Viraj Kariyawasam.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, my first supplementary question is this. There has been a trend of declining numbers in many schools due to excessive Grade 1 admissions at popular schools. In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered capping Grade 1 classes at 35 students from 2016. Internationally, 25 is the norm. In 2016, Minister Akila Viraj Kariyawasam implemented this, progressively reducing admissions to reach 35 by 2020/2021. However, after 2020, a Cabinet Paper reversed this and raised the cap to 42. You spoke about the education crisis caused by overcrowded classes, yet your Government continues with 42 per class. This increases enrolment in popular schools and drains smaller schools. Why not return to the Supreme Court’s 35-student limit for Grade 1?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 7 May 2026 ·No. 23540 ·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.
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/lk/speeches/3387
Cite as: The Hon. Mujibur Rahuman. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 7 May 2026. No. 23540. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/3387