Hon C. W. W Kannanagara is truly the father of Free Education in Sri Lanka who had a vision of providing free education to all at all levels from primary to tertiary in 1944, whereas it was only in 1990, after Jometien EFA conference, the world development organization advocated at least primary education must be free for all. After 70 years of free education, Sri Lanka has accomplished the Kannangara agenda with achieved high performance in the socioeconomic indicators. Now the time has come for Sri Lanka to go beyond the Kannangara agenda to ensure the Sri Lankan children and youth are offered the 21st skills based education. Though Sri Lanka records high performance in internal efficiency of the education system, the external efficiency is low due to heavy academic and examination oriented education and negligence of developing skills. The 21st century learning framework demands generic skills as a learning outcome. Educational reforms need to address the issue of developing an innovative curriculum and authenticated learning and assessment systems to ensure the 21st century children of Sri Lanka to acquire generic skills and to be able to do things than simply have the knowledge of things with no skills to perform. [A bibliography is included.]