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Good practice Imported

AI Chatbot for the '1966' Vocational Education Hotline — Sri Lanka's Trilingual Guidance Assistant for School Leavers

Sri Lanka · Colombo · See the Sri Lanka profile · See the Colombo profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 83% 40/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Sri Lanka's Vocational Education Sector launched an in-house-built, trilingual (Sinhala/Tamil/English) AI chatbot alongside its '1966' hotline in November 2025 to guide school leavers, parents and teachers toward vocational-training options.

AI Chatbot for the '1966' Vocational Education Hotline — Sri Lanka's Trilingual Guidance Assistant for School Leavers

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education (Vocational Education Sector), Sri Lanka
Period
2025–
Keywords
education, vocational training, e-government, multilingual chatbot

Context

On 6 November 2025, Sri Lanka's Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education launched what it described as the country's first fully AI-based government service-delivery web chatbot, alongside a new '1966' telephone hotline, at the Nipunatha Piyasa centre in Narahenpita, Colombo. The system answers questions in Sinhala, Tamil and English about vocational-training opportunities, eligibility and procedures for students, parents and teachers, and was built entirely in-house by the ministry's own ICT unit rather than outsourced to a vendor.

Activities

The chatbot supports the new school curriculum's vocational strand by connecting learners to real information channels.

Conclusions

Neither the ministry nor independent outlets have yet published call volumes, chatbot usage figures or outcome data.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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