Courtesey: http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=13125

English as a Life Skill set to increase jobs in IT sector

By Dilrukshi FernandoOver 200,000 students are ballooning into an anti-establishment each year under the public school system, according to Enterprise, Development and Investment Promotion Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama. The minister’s comments came at a Presidential Task Force Initiative “English as a Life Skill”, Business forum and exhibition jointly organized by the Presidential Secretariat and the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka last week. “Only 1,700 students benefit from the budget allocation assigned for higher education after gaining acceptance to local universities,” Amunugama said delivering the keynote address at the forum. The disparity between the students arises, according to him, when the youth who could not gain admittance begin to search for jobs. English which has become an essential skill in the private sector and tint the global sphere as a universal language poses as a problem to most children from outstation government schools in the island. According to Presidential Task Force Coordinator Sunimal Fernando, 21,000 English teachers are “supposed to be teaching English” in 10,000 government schools in and around the island. “As the statistics show, the dissemination of human resources to teaching the language to the future generation is not a problem,” Fernando highlighted. “However acquiring the necessary spoken English skills for a job in the service sector has become a problem amongst the students,” he divulged. He attributed the outdated methods of teaching English through grammar and translation, employed by most teachers, as reasons for the drawback.“The G.C.E Ordinary Level success rate has never topped the 50% mark for English,” Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga who also spoke at the gathering stated. He pointed out that the illiteracy rate amongst certain teachers as one of the main causes. “Yet we have positive stories as well,” Weeratunga elaborated citing the example of the Katuwela School in the North Central Province, where all 400 children attending the school have the speaking and writing ability of English, as a result of the hard work of a dedicated individual who strived for change. “All we need is to elevate potential and break the language barrier. That is the only way we can expand investment,” he added. All speakers highlighted the need for a bilingual society to compete with the current global trends. The programme titled “English as a Life Skill” is one such step taken towards gearing up youth for the job market by teaching them job-oriented English language skills. “India is one country that overcame this challenge and has rapidly developed in recent years in the sectors of IT and Business Processing Outsourcing (BPOs),” it was stated. The programme is a far sighted approach to give a larger populace of Sri Lanka the opportunity to benefit from English language skills,” High Commissioner of India Alok Prasad told the gathering. The modern methods of listen, speak, read and write used in India to teach English are to be incorporated to the local teaching trends as part of the initiative. Accordingly, the services of eleven leading English language institutions from Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi along with 275 private institutions which teach English across Sri Lanka, including the North and East, will be utilized for the purpose as a first step beginning this month. Secondly, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad will arrive in Sri Lanka to launch the Center of English Language Training. “This institute will see the transferring of the Indian teaching methods to Sri Lanka and train 30 English teachers as master trainers who will in turn spread their knowledge,” Fernando added. A result of this initiative will be the recruitment of 54,000 persons who have acquired the necessary skills into jobs in the IT sector and the BPOs. The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, Ministry of Tourism and Sri Lankan Airlines are supporters of the initiative.

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