Nov 16, Colombo: Education Minister Susil Premajayantha says that the aim should be to create human resources who can acquire a wide range of experiences and skills through the school system with co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.

The minister made these comments while attending the opening ceremony of the first session of the student parliament program held at Sirimavo Bandaranaike Vidyalaya, Colombo.

The minister further pointed out that trough the Student Parliament Program, which is currently being implemented very actively in many major schools in the island, great support is provided to students to improve personality development qualities such as leadership skills, team spirit, respect for ideas, listening, patience, etc. and create a broader vision and understanding

Furthermore, the program supports the students to improve awareness of universal suffrage, the role of parliament in a democratic government, fiscal responsibility, powers and responsibilities of the legislature, executive and judiciary, a broader view of local and foreign governance systems, parliamentary functioning, holding elections, the role of people's representatives, etc.

This student parliament program is jointly implemented by the Election Commission and the Ministry of Education.

A number of important objectives have been primarily taken into consideration, including the direct involvement of school children in the work of nation building with the aim of regional and national development, creating actionable opportunities for achieving national education common goals and skill sets and more effective establishment of skills expected to be developed in the school community through the subject of citizenship education, both theoretically and practically.

Dr. J Sumedha Jayaweera, the Principal of Sirimavo Bandaranaike Vidyalaya, Colombo, Chairman of the Election Commission RMAL Ratnayake, Election Commissioner General Saman Sri Ratnayake and many other dignitaries attended the event.