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"content": "However, as more books are bought, the Ministry should come up with a programme of managing the books. The Minister has contributed money toward purchase of books, but, due to poor management, if you go to primary schools, you will not find most of those books. If you find them, most of them are torn. So, the Ministry needs to come up with a programme of managing the book resource. Purchase of books is a big investment, but, because of poor management, most of the books end up disappearing or getting torn. We also need to look into co-curricular activities, because, due to an increase in school enrolment, most of the co-curricular activities cannot be funded by the money that is currently provided. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will find that when there are things like sports, schools approach the Members to contribute. They ask the District Education Board (DEB) to ask parents to contribute towards this. This brings a big strain to the parents and also the leaders, particularly the Members of Parliament. So, if we can increase the amount of money that is allocated towards this, programmes like the co- curricular activities can be funded. We have just discussed about the scheme of service for the non-teaching staff. In most of these schools, particularly primary schools, some of the subordinate staff or the non-teaching staff are not paid salaries. They even go for three to six months without salaries. So, it is important that we look at the possibility of increasing this amount, so that money can be available to pay for all these extra- curricular activities, particularly the non-teaching staff. The other issue that I want to raise is that our Ministry has come up with an ICT Programme and I want to commend it, but the problem is that we have no capacity to implement this programme due to lack of funding. The ICT is so crucial for our schools. If this country is going to become ICT compliant, then we have to start at the primary school level. The Government needs to put in more money, particularly to develop the ICT infrastructure for all our schools. Currently, candidates both in primary and secondary schools need to register online for their national examinations. About 95 per cent of our schools do not have ICT infrastructure. They are having a lot of problems and challenges. With an increase in the amount of money that goes to the free primary education, we should be able to plan and put specific funds for the ICT infrastructure development, so that our schools can have fully fledged ICT infrastructure. Finally, I want to encourage the Ministry to move forward with the programme on improving the leadership of our schools. The leadership of our schools should be based on performance, so that our head teachers can be evaluated based on performance. Our schools need to come up with a programme on how to build the capacity of heads of schools and set targets for them, so that those who do not meet the set targets are eventually removed to maintain the leadership of our schools. The Government is putting a lot of money in these schools, but because of poor leadership in some of the schools, this money is not being used effectively. We need effective leadership in our schools. That is one area that I would like the Ministry to put a lot of emphasis on. If they do that, we will make use of this money very effectively. With those many remarks, I want to support this Motion."
}