Commercial Bank unveils ambitious ‘Smart Schools’ initiative

The seminar for school principals on Commercial Bank’s new ‘Smart Schools’ initiative

A groundbreaking new initiative to the pass levels in key subjects in the curriculum of secondary schools has been launched by the Commercial Bank of Ceylon as part of the bank’s extensive commitment to promote education.

Adding to the impact of the 170 computer labs already donated by the bank to schools around the island, the new initiative seeks to create ‘smart schools’ where students and teachers use these IT facilities to improve knowledge and skills in subjects such as English, Mathematics and Science for the GCE Ordinary Level and Bioscience and Mathematics for the Advanced Level.

Working with Headstart Ltd., the company which owns the educational website Guru.lk, Commercial Bank has utilised the knowledge of a panel of academics to develop curriculum-based new content that will be part of the Learning Management Systems that will be installed in the computers of the school IT labs and will be accessible from external computers as well.

The objective is to create a new platform for students and teachers to interact with each other after school hours, download course material and teaching guides and engage in extra work that could make a difference in pass rates at the GCE Ordinary and Advanced Level examinations.

The lessons in the e-Management system will go beyond traditional classroom teaching methods to include more graphical illustrations, diagrams, interactive assignments and feedback mechanisms to simplify complex subject matter, the bank said.

“The focus of the initial phase of our schools IT labs program was to raise computer literacy levels among students on a mass scale,” Commercial Bank’s Managing Director/CEO Jegan Durairatnam said. “With that aspect taken care of, it became important to harness the wider potential of the IT facilities to resolve the pressing issue of low pass rates in some critically important subjects. Our Smart Schools program is one example of how we can address this problem.”

He said that the bank believed that the program could be extended further to cover vocational training at a later stage.

Commercial Bank’s Smart Schools program envisages giving students and teachers usernames and passwords to access the content through different login levels. Student users will have login levels that allow them to use the content in the system to further their knowledge in various subjects. They will also be able to contribute innovative ideas and seek solutions to subject-related issues through a forum where other students and teachers are present. Teachers will have a login level that enables them to access resource materials and teaching guides as well as chat with their peers in other schools about teaching methods and subject matter.

The initial program to educate principals of 100 schools in the Western Province on the Smart Schools initiative was held recently at Commercial Bank with the participation of the Additional Provincial Director of Education for the Western Province, Wimal Gunaratne.

Commercial Bank’s CSR Trust has an extensive, multi-dimensional portfolio of community initiatives.