Background

The need for a change in the field of teacher education and training was strongly felled in the decades of 1970 and 1980.The old system of teacher education which was mainly handled by the teacher’s training colleges which undoubtedly had produced and endowed generations of efficient teachers to the field of education was on the decline. The main fault of that in service teacher education system was that it sent untrained teacher s to schools and these teachers sometimes served in schools at least for two or three years without proper teaching skills and a clear perception of what teaching is. For example, some teachers of English failed to get admission to the teachers’ training colleges as they failed to get through the competitive selective test which determined the entry. In consequence of the recommendations of the educational white paper in 1981, The National Colleges of Education system which aimed at providing pre-service teacher education was set up in 1985.

The names of these colleges and their courses are as follows

1. Mahaweli NCOE - Polgolla - Primary Education
2. Sariputta NCOE - Nittambuwa - Buddism
3. NCOE for Physical Education - Bandarawela - Physical Education
4. Hapitigama NCOE - Mirigama - Primary Education
5. Siyane NCOE - Veyangoda - Maths/Science
6. Pasdunrata NCOE - Kaluthara - English

MahaweliNCOE goes in the annals of the system of National Colleges of Education as it was one of the first six colleges of education founded in 1985. The land and the buildings Of Uyanwatta Teachers' college which was established in 1949 and used to function as as in-service teacher training institute for lady teachers were acquired to establish Mahaweli national College of Education.The college is situated in Dumbera valley in the Central Province fraught with scenic beauty. The MNCOE which is under the total supervision of Chief Commissioner (Teacher Education) is managed by the President and three Vice Presidents who are in charge of administration and finance, academic and quality assurance and continuing Teacher Education. From the inception MahaweliNCOE keeps on changing in keeping with the contemporary needs and changing conditions of the Sri Lankan school system. The conversion of the college into an English medium institute from the Primary teacher training institute began in 2000 and the English Course was introduced accordingly. Later on, two other courses were introduced Western Music in 2001 and Library and Information Studies in 2002.Subsequent to this basic change, in each consecutive year, the number of entrees to the Primary Course were gradually curtailed. At the end of the year 2005 the last batch of Primary teachers passed out of the college. In 2009 In 2009 a decision was taken by the Ministry of Education to scrap the LIS course. The last batch of LIS teacher trainees are now receiving their internship training in 20 schools around city of Kandy. As there was an increasing demand from the school system in Sri Lanka for teachers to teach Sinhala in Tamil medium schools and Tamil in Sinhala medium schools, the Ministry of Education decided to introduce a new teacher training course for the College of Education, to fulfill the above requirements. MNCOE was selected to conduct this course and subsequently the first batch was taken in 2009.Parallel to this the blended language laboratory was built in 2009 with the aids of GTZ. With the exception of the Western Music course, the college has totally become a training institute for language teachers. The following pre-service teacher training courses are available at Mahaweli NCOE.

1.Teaching English as the International Language.
2.Western Music
3.Teaching Second National Language ( Sinhala)
4.Teaching Second National Language ( Tamil)