School Education and Information Technology: Problems, Challenges & Potentialities

Abstract

Education is the best gift given to a child by parents. Education is building the creative and intelligent labor force. That situation should be conducive to win the target of Economic Growth. The relationship between economic growth and education systems is very valuable for a country. Education system has many tasks and responsibilities. The school is the institute of special contribution for the education. Role of teachers, students and school curriculum is critical factors to create labor force for the future. The Sri Lankan school curriculum is also changing appropriately. Sri Lankan government always gets Education reforms and revises the school curriculum. They enquire about the subjects demanded by the current economy and compare them with global trends and then introduce the new subjects to the school curriculum. In 2006, Sri Lankan authorities of education introduced “Information and Communication Technology” to school curriculum and that subject has continued properly since 2009.

Main Objective in this study, identify what the present problems, challenges & potentiality of “Information and Communication Technology” subject in the school education system and identify activities to develop that subject.

In this study both urban and semi urban areas were selected as the study area for comparison. These two areas selected from Colombo and Hambantota districts. Sri Jayewardenepura Educational Zone was selected from Colombo district and Tangalle Educational Zone was selected from Hambantota district for the sample. Researcher randomly selected 40 schools from these two areas based on simple proportion method. There are about 40 teachers who teach Information Technology in both Educational Zones and 40 students who are following the subject of “Information and Communication Technology” in both the Educational Zones.

Both primary and secondary data were utilized for this study. The sample survey using questionnaires and did interviews in the selected areas. Teachers, instructors, students and IT professionals were used as primary data recourses. Books, magazine and other documents such as internet documents were also used as secondary data recourses for this study.

This study could identify more present problems to continue this subject. Inadequacy of physical and human recourses was the most significant problem they faced when continuing this subject in school. Then we can identify other problems like maintenance problem, electricity power bill problem, subject manual and teacher’s guide books problem for study, etc. In this study can identify potential factors like height percentage of pass for the subject. Teacher’s and student’s satisfaction for subject and teacher’s commitment to continue this subject could be identified as positive factors. Sri Lankan government and educational authorities should get actions to supply physical and human resources to school IT labs and control inequality of distribution of resource to schools. Then, they must conduct training programmes, seminars and workshops to improve teacher’s soft skills.