The Theraputta National School
The School
The Theraputta National School is about 1 mile inland and although it was not washed away by the Tsunami many staff and students lost family members. In 2007 the school was completely re-built as part of the post Tsunami recovery Plan. When we visited the staff and students were working in fairly dreadful conditions and it will be interesting to see what things are like in their brand new building.
The school takes students from age 5 though to 19. Year groups are referred to as grades and follow the same number sequence as hours, so Grade 11 is the same as our Year 11. The students take international O’ levels and A’ levels so the education system has many similarities with ours. One of the reasons the Sri Lankans are so keen to link with us is that the most able students are now taught their lessons in English rather than the native languages of Sinalha or Tamil. This is to help Sri Lanka to become more competitive in international markets. The link then is to help the Sri Lankan students improve their English.
