SuRaLa Net Co., Ltd.

In Sri Lanka, schools have been closed since the middle of March due to the spread of COVID-19. Although some are striving to resume, the majority of schools are still closed as of July 2020. Accordingly, SuRaLa Net started offering e-learning program “Surala Ninja!” which used to be offered at school or in tuition centres, as a home learning tool in April. Since then, more than 750 students have learned with this program. “Surala Ninja!” is an independent learning system developed for the primary school students in oversea countries to be able to enjoy learning the basic math calculation with interactive learning style. Lower graders who have not fully had the habit of independent learning can also enjoy learning at home. As a part of this program, “Digital Math Calculation Contest” has been launched in order for the children to maintain their learning motivation under the school closed period due to COVID-19. As of the end of July, five contests had been held and more than 600 students from the first to seventh graders had participated.

We also held a digital survey to 216 parents whose children go to public, private, or international schools in the end of May. The purpose is to appropriately understand the children’s latest situation of “home learning” According to the result, many parents expressed concern for a lack of teacher’s remote support, degrading children’s motivation to study and disruptions of children’s learning habits due to the prolonged school closure period. In this context, we and staff of Next Learners Pvt Ltd., our local partner in Sri Lanka, are holding online meeting with primary schools to share the good practices of Japanese school operations which have made effective use of digital learning under school closing period. In addition, we also introduce new concept of “Education Continuity Plan (ECP)” which defines that schools take necessary preparations to be able to continue operations in case of emergency with predicting any potential risks such as COVID-19 presently, or terrorism attack which occurred in Sri Lanka on April 2019,

Based on various activities mentioned above, some schools have introduced “Surala Ninja!” as a home learning, and the teachers training has been conducted. In this way, the digital learning is being disseminated in Sri Lanka.