High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka Santosh Jha and Secretary, Ministry of Education and Science and Technology, Mrs. J.M. Thilaka Jayasundara signed and exchanged diplomatic letters on 18 October 2024 to formalize modalities regarding doubling the grant support of Government of India (GOI) to the up-gradation of 9 schools in the plantation regions of Sri Lanka.
With the additional funds infused at the request of the Government of Sri Lanka, GOI’s total commitment to the project now stands at SLR 600 million.
The project envisages up-gradation of infrastructure of 9 plantation schools identified by the Government of Sri Lanka. These include 6 schools in the plantation areas of Central Province and one school each in Uva, Sabaragamuwa and Southern Province.
The project would add to the long list of numerous past and ongoing development partnership initiatives of India in Sri Lanka in the important sector of education.
Besides support for infrastructure development and equipment supply, training and capacity-building have formed an equally important focus area for India’s development cooperation projects in the sector in Sri Lanka.
A selection of only a few instances would include renovation works at over 100 schools in the Northern Province; setting up of 40 e-Libraries in the Southern and Eastern Provinces; supply of 110 buses to educational institutions across the island; setting up of English language laboratories in all provinces of the country; establishment and renovation of auditoriums at numerous institutions across the country, including the Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Auditorium at Ruhuna University; construction of a multi-ethnic tri-lingual school at Polonnaruwa in the North Central Province; support to vocational training institutions such as the Thondaman Vocational Training Centre at Hatton in the Central Province and the Vantharamullai and Onthachimadam Centres in the Eastern Province; establishment of smart classrooms and computer labs in 200 schools in Galle in the Southern Province; among many others. A 3-month teacher-training program in STEM subjects for plantation schools was also conducted recently under the multi-sectoral grant assistance of INR 750 million announced last year to mark 200 years of arrival of Indian-origin Tamil community to Sri Lanka.