Youth Unemployment

June 16, 2013, 9:52 pm

by Dasun Edirisinghe

Today’s unemployment crisis was consequent to the ill-conceived educational policies in effect before 1994. About 80 per cent of school leavers found it difficult to find employment as most of them could not even pass the GCE O/L till last year, Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena said.

He told The Island that the GCE O/L success rate had been just 20 percent and tragically neither the government nor the private sector were able to accommodate the 80 per cent of students who had failed that examination.

Gunawardena said that due to the unsuccessful educational policies of then successive governments, those school leavers were left with no option but to work as labourers.

He said that only 19.5 per cent of students who sat the GCE O/L had passed prior to 1994."The Rajapaksa government which assumed office in 2005 and it was able to Gunawadena said at present about 65 per cent of candidates passed the GCE O/L due to various projects initiated by his ministry.

According to the ministry statistics, 118,000 and 85,000 students failed the Mathematics and Science respectively, at the 2012 GCE O/L examination, while 11,100 students failed all subjects. About 542,260 students sat the GCE O/L in that year.
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