National school (Sri Lanka)

A National school (Sinhala: ජාතික පාසල, Jathika Pasala, Tamil: தேசியப் பாடசாலை) in Sri Lanka is a school that is funded and administered by the Ministry of Education of the central government as opposed to Provincial schools run by the local provincial council.

Today, there are 396 National Schools in country constituting 3 percent of total National and Provincial Schools.

[1] With the decentralisation of government administration following the establishment of provincial councils from the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1987, the central government transferred control of government schools, with the exception of 18 elite schools that had been designated as national schools by the Ministry of Education in 1985.

In most cases upgrade appeared to be a mere name change with no tangible change as by 2000 there were 317 national schools islandwide.

[2] The National Education Commission stated on the situation in 2003: "... the new category of a limited number of National Schools created in the early 1980s using strict criteria to identify schools with very good facilities and offering quality education has become meaningless and distorted with the indiscriminate addition of schools that do not conform to these criteria.