DP Education celebrates empowering 30,000 students with Rs. 21 b worth IT knowledge and skills

 Students of DP Education IT Campuses in Jaffna district with MP and DP Education Founder Dhammika Perera and Jaffna District MP Angajan Ramanathan at the ceremony held at Muttraveli Grounds in Jaffna yesterday 

 

• Reaches milestone with 5,000 students in 8 DP Education IT Campuses in Jaffna district joining the 25,000 strong IT-skilled pool in Kandy, Hambantota, Matara, Kurunegala and Monaragala districts

DP Education yesterday celebrated the milestone of empowering 30,000 students with Rs. 21 billion worth of IT knowledge and skills with the addition of 5,000 youth in Jaffna district.

The students in Jaffna join the IT-skilled pool of existing 25,000 youth in five other districts of Kandy, Hambantota, Matara, Kurunegala and Monaragala.

Certificates on completing different stages of coding software knowledge (worth Rs. 4 billion) were distributed to parents of the students at a packed Muttraveli Grounds in Jaffna. These 5,000 students are attached to 8 DP Education IT Campuses in Jaffna Nallur, Vaddukoddai, Tellippalai, Valvetty, Nelliady, Chavakachcheri, Chunnakam and Kopai. The eight campuses are part of the network of 142 DP IT Campuses countrywide benefitting 135,000 students. Eighteen of the DP IT Campus Silicon Valley IT offices undertake software and web development jobs. 

The certification handover was attended by business leader turned SLPP Parliamentarian Dhammika Perera under whose philanthropic arm DP Foundation, the DP Education IT Campuses operate.

DP Education IT Campus integrates six global platforms, including CODE.org, Thunkable, Pictoblox, Microbit, COSPACES and HTML. The curriculum available in Sinhala, Tamil and English language consists of 324 coding projects, each with 324 accompanying homework assignments.

Global price of this course excluding homework is $ 7,500 or Rs. 2.5 million.

The second stage includes Full Stack Developer and Cloud Computing courses from the University of Moratuwa. The third stage allows students to pursue free courses offered by DP Education IT Campus in collaboration with Universities of Moratuwa, Kelaniya, and Ruhuna.

The course content is developed jointly by DP Education, the universities and the Sri Lanka Association for Software Services Companies (SLASSCOM), the national chamber for the knowledge and innovation industry.

The curriculum’s first and second stages can be accessed through smartphones. The third and final stage requires a computer or laptop. The course targets completion within two years for a regular school student (two hours per week plus homework) and six months for those out of school and can dedicate 12 hours per week.

The broader goal of DP Education IT Campuses is to empower one million students free of charge with global IT knowledge and skills worth $ 7.5 billion in five years on the basis of Rs. 2.5 million per student cost incurred by DP Education IT Campus or a total of Rs. 2,500 billion or $ 7.5 billion over the five-year period.