Anton Peiris News Today

By Anton Peiris , Emeritus Coordinator, International Baccalaureate Goolbai Gunasekera has written a very good article: ‘A return to the English Medium of Instruction in schools is desperately   needed’. I wish to take on from where Goolbai Gunasekera has left. The goal that she has proposed is laudable, but it will take a very long […]

(Reduce O / Level STRESS continued) 1. The shortage of Trained Science Teachers   The National Curriculum Framework document published by our National Institute of Education makes the following observation: There is a shortage of qualified STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teachers and a deployment practice skewed towards urban schools, making it difficult for non-urban students to access STEM streams. As a result, the government’s efforts to increase STEM access in pr...

By Tharishi Hewavithanagamage The pandemic forced many audiences to turn to streaming services to get a dose of their favourite television series, variety shows and other popular entertainment. The streaming services are currently leading the nominations list for the 73rd Emmy Awards, announced by the Television Academy. Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ and the Disney+ Stars Wars spinoff series ‘The Mandalorian’ are leading with 24 nominations each. The Disney+ series ‘WandaVision’ earned th...

(Reduce O/Level STRESS continued) Sri Lankan GCE O/Level students are 40 years behind their counterparts in the UK vis-a-vis the use of calculators, which were introduced into secondary schools in the UK around 1980. These ordinary scientific calculators had arithmetic functions, squares, square roots, reciprocals, trigonometrical, exponential and logarithmic functions and their Inverses, etc. They were not graphic display calculators (i. e. calculators that can display graphs, statistical fun...