The two main areas of the task force will be co-ordinated by Mr. Sunimal Fernando, Advisor to the President (the role of English) and Mr. Ranjit Fernando, Project Leader – ICBP, Information and Communication Technology Agency (the role of IT). It will also comprise an additional 20 senior state and private sector officials who will contribute their expertise to the task force.

According to its Terms of Reference, the Presidential Task Force will be responsible for the planning, designing and direct implementation of programmes for the improvement of English and IT among youth and school children. This includes production of more than 50,000 youth in job-oriented spoken/communicative English and basic IT skills for potential employment in IT-enabled services such as call centers and business processing outsourcing industries, within the next three years.

It will seek to install the infrastructure within and enhance the capacity of the mainstream school system to ensure that school leavers throughout the country by the end of 2010 at either O’ level or the A’ level will possess English and basic IT skills demanded by the job market. To this end, the two task committees have been established under two coordinators to make the process more stream-lined and focused.

The task force has been urged to take up the responsibility of training teachers, which will on the long run, facilitate the achievement of the above objectives and to prepare a budget for the implementation of the programmes in collaboration with Ministries of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology.