Education Minister and Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya has stated in Parliament that more than 3,000 lecturer vacancies in universities are being filled, along with vacancies in non-academic staff positions. She also confirmed that a major restructuring of the higher education sector is currently being planned.<\/p>\n
She made these remarks during the Prime Minister\u2019s Question Time session held in Parliament on Wednesday (06), responding to a question raised by government MP Manjula Sugantha Ratnayake.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister stated that out of 281,810 students who sat for the recent G.C.E. Advanced Level examination, 176,530 students have qualified for university admission. From this group, 42,937 students are expected to be enrolled into universities under the current intake plan.<\/p>\n
She further announced that two new study programmes have been introduced for the 2025\u20132026 academic years, and these courses are scheduled to begin in the first week of September 2026.<\/p>\n
A special committee has been appointed to design policy reforms for higher education, which has already been functioning for the past six months. The committee is currently reviewing existing challenges in the university system as well as broader higher education issues, including vocational education.<\/p>\n
According to the Minister, higher education is not limited to universities alone but includes vocational and professional education as well. Therefore, the committee has been tasked with formulating a comprehensive reform framework covering the entire sector.<\/p>\n
She added that university expansion in recent years has increased student intake and introduced new faculties, but staffing and infrastructure planning did not develop accordingly. The current government is now working to address these gaps through proper manpower planning and administrative restructuring.<\/p>\n
The committee\u2019s final report is expected soon, after which policy-level decisions will be taken to implement reforms in the higher education sector.<\/p>\n
Regarding staffing shortages, she noted that since 2022 many vacancies had remained unfilled. Approval has now been granted to fill lecturer positions based on university requirements, taking into account existing shortages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Education Minister and Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya has stated in Parliament that more than 3,000 lecturer vacancies in universities are being filled, along with vacancies in non-academic staff positions. She also confirmed that a major restructuring of the higher education sector is currently being planned. She made these remarks during the Prime Minister\u2019s Question Time …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":919,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions\/919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}