The National Science Foundation (NSF) is mandated by Technology Development Act No. 11 of 1994 to popularize science and facilitate science education in the country. Accordingly, the Science Communication and Outreach Division (SCOD) of the NSF undertake several programmes to fulfill the mandate. The developing infrastructure facilities of schools in science education, conducting training programmes for teachers etc. Although there are 10,000 schools in the country only 750 schools have A/L science stream. Majority of the school children do not have laboratory facilities to learn science. A drop in enrollment to A/L science stream during recent years and also high failures of students in Science and Math subject at the O/L shows that students are moving away from science. Therefore, there is an urgent need to attract more children to study science. Further, it is identified as an urgent requirement to improve the science education to increase the science literacy among the community and motivate people to engage scientific thinking and to produce well qualified and skilled labour force in the country.
Though, Sri Lanka has a free education system ensuring the education to all the groups of students. Still, it is well known fact that there is an inequality in availability of teaching staff and infrastructure among schools in the country. Most of the underprivileged schools do not possess many resources and most of the students attending these schools are from low-income families, where parent do not have time or tendency to follow their children’s educational requirements or developments. Therefore, the performance of the students at these schools become very low at the national examinations such as G.C.E O/L and A/Ls. Very often many students drop their schools after O/Ls or even before, due to the problems mentioned above and no motivation or encouragement for them to attend schools either from schools or from their home background. Therefore, well planned programme should be implemented to motivate school staff to pay more attention to these students and create more enjoyable learning environment at the school. The student’s attitude on attending schools and learning should be changed positively to get their full engagement. The awareness programmes for parents also should be taken at the school level to the get their cooperation and engagement to development of the school environment more friendly for the students. Accordingly, National Science Foundation to support these schools to improve their performance at the national level examination especially paying attention to improve the science and math education and create students’ interest to learn science and also to improve soft and hard skills need in STEM related jobs. The programme is conducted jointly with the science section of the Ministry of Education
Only the School Science Societies and University Science Societies registered with the NSF are eligible for the Scheme (registration with the NSF is free of charge).
Programmes will be considered under two main categories as Science Education Programmes and Science Popularization Programmes.