The Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education has issued a circular setting out how schools are to arrange their timetables under the new education reforms, including revised school hours that take effect next year.

The instructions have been sent to all Provincial Chief Secretaries, Education Secretaries, Directors and school principals, NewsFirst reported on Thursday morning.

The new school day

From next year, the school day is set at different lengths by grade. All three bands start at the same time:

The effect is a markedly shorter day for the youngest children, who finish more than an hour and a half before the upper grades.

How the curriculum rollout is phased

Curriculum changes were introduced for Grade 1 at the beginning of this year. As the next phase, the revised curriculum is due for Grades 2 and 6 next year, and those students then carry the new curriculum up through each grade.

The circular also puts the revised curriculum into Grade 5 in 2030, the G.C.E. Ordinary Level in 2030, and Advanced Level reforms into effect in 2033.

A date that does not line up

Those last figures are reported as the filing gives them, but they do not reconcile with the phasing described alongside them. A cohort beginning the new curriculum in Grade 6 next year would not sit the Ordinary Level examination until 2032, not 2030. The Grade 5 date fits — this year’s Grade 1 intake reaches Grade 5 in 2030 — but the O/L date does not follow from the sequence as stated.

The discrepancy is left as published rather than resolved here. Whether it reflects a separate transitional arrangement for the Ordinary Level or an error in the report cannot be determined from the single filing available.

Not reported

The report does not give the length of a teaching period, the number of periods a week, or how subjects are allocated under the new timetables. It does not say whether the revised hours apply uniformly across all provinces and school types, what happens to Grade 5 scholarship preparation, or how transport and staffing are to be adjusted to a staggered finish. The circular’s number and date of issue are not stated.

A note on sourcing: Ada Derana also reported the circular. Its pages have been returning an access block to this desk for some weeks, so its filing could not be fetched or date-verified and is not cited here.

Update, 5 November: a second newsroom confirms the hours — and the 2030 figure

Hiru News filed its own account of the circular later on Thursday, giving this story the independent corroboration it lacked at the time of writing.

Hiru’s report matches the three time bands exactly — Grades 1 and 2 to 11.45 a.m., Grades 3 and 4 to 1.00 p.m., and Grade 5 up to Advanced Level to 1.30 p.m., all starting at 7.30 a.m. It also confirms that the circular went to Provincial Chief Secretaries, Education Secretaries, Directors of Education and principals, and that the curriculum reform reaches Grades 2 and 6 next year after starting with Grade 1 this year.

What this does to the discrepancy noted above

The section above flagged that the Ordinary Level date does not follow from the phasing described alongside it, and left open whether that was a transitional arrangement or an error in a single report.

Hiru independently gives the same figure — the new curriculum reaching the Ordinary Level in 2030. Two newsrooms reporting the same year makes a transcription error by one outlet much less likely, and points instead to the figure being stated that way in the circular itself. The arithmetic objection is unchanged: a cohort starting the new curriculum in Grade 6 in 2027 would not sit the O/L until 2032. What the update settles is that the inconsistency is in the source material, not in the reporting of it.

Hiru also confirms that this year’s Grade 1 pupils will meet the reformed curriculum again when they reach Grade 5, which is the 2030 Grade 5 date given above.

One figure Hiru does not carry

Hiru’s filing breaks off mid-sentence at the Advanced Level, confirming the Ordinary Level year but stopping before it gives a year for A/L reform. The 2033 date above therefore still rests on the NewsFirst filing alone and has not been independently confirmed.