Sri Lanka’s education sector has been one of the hardest hits because of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the sudden closure of schools to curb the spread since March of 2020 and the challenges that followed, students were left out of contact with their respective schools.
Against this backdrop, Dialog Axiata PLC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Education to deploy 10 Education Channels to be provided absolutely free over Dialog Television and via the ViU App. The first phase of this welcome initiative saw the launch of four channels on 7 September 2021 with the promise of a total of ten channels to be launched in the coming months. The channels will be accessible on Dialog television and on any smartphone by downloading the ViU Mobile TV app. They will be available absolutely free without any subscription charges or data charges.
Content for the channels will be developed by the State Ministry of Education Reforms, Open Universities and Distance Learning Promotion and the National Institute of Education as per the national curriculum. Four of the newly launched channels — Nenasa O/L Sinhala (Ch. 22), Nenasa O/L Tamil (Ch. 23), Nenasa A/L Sinhala (Ch. 24) and Nenasa A/L Tamil (Ch. 25) — are geared towards students preparing for the upcoming G.C.E. O/L and A/L examinations, covering lessons conducted by the country’s best educators with immersive, engaging and innovative teaching techniques. The ViU Mobile TV App available on Android, iOS, and Huawei App Galleries, have the option of rewinding the TV channel for up to 2 hours and catching up on the past 3 days’ missed programmes, giving students the option to relearn important topics.
Dialog also powers a range of educational platforms under the national-level Nenasa initiative; Nenasa Smart School, Nenasa App and the toll-free 1916 distance learning helpline. In addition to extended free access to Nenasa TV channels, Dialog also extended free access to the Guru TV Channel (Ch.20) through Dialog Television and the ViU Mobile TV App.
