Educators prepare for summit
The national education summit is scheduled for May, and in preparation for that event, consultations are being held in every district. Today was the Belize District’s turn, and judging from the turn out, it’s a subject with an important place on the national agenda. Jacqueline Woods has the story.
Dian Castillo Maheia, Coordinator, Summit Secretariat
“You know we have come so far and we want to go even farther. But we want to go farther hearing from people. You know, what do you see as a problem and how can we fix this problem.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
It was on that premise the fifth people’s consultation on education took place at the Belize City Centre. The participants, who represented teachers, students, parents, administrators and non-governmental organisations came together to discuss sixteen specific educational services and come up with recommendations they believe will help to strengthen the system.
(Group discussion)
“They might have an A Level, Bachelors or whatever. If they don’t get the practical work to know how to get across the knowledge to the children it won’t happen, they need that practical work.”
“How do we put students into groups when in a class of forty-eight you will have students reading at different levels. It you have a class of fifteen how do we put the students into different groups to address individuals needs? So I think it can be just as effective if you know the appropriate strategies to use.”
“In terms of what we do at tertiary, it should be the result of what we need in the country and what areas we are limited in, in terms of what we are going to be providing.”
“If the child doesn’t get the nutrition value in a certain period of time, when they jump like, seven, eight years old, it hinders their learning process.”
According to the Education Summit Secretariat Coordinator, Dian Castillo Maheia, so far the consultations have been dominated by the problems that exist and not necessarily what changes need to take place or plans implemented.
Dian Castillo Maheia
“But that is good for us because then we use the problems to identify the key issues that we then are taking to the summit. Because what we want to come out of the final summit is a list of recommendations that we will then put into the final report and then everything is going to be given to the ministry and it will be used as they draft their plans for education for long term, for the next ten, fifteen, twenty years.”
The groups discussed all levels of education, including primary, secondary, tertiary, preschool, special education, vocational, technical, adult and continuing studies. Other key areas are school management, expressive arts and culture, student welfare, sports and health, tourism, business, curriculum, and textbooks.
Beatrice Robateau, Representative, School Management Group
“We see the budget for education is twenty-two point six percent, but of that twenty-two point six, more than eighty percent is on wages and salaries. So it leaves nothing for the operation and maintenance of schools and teachers training. Training is like two point five percent, which we think is inadequate if we want to improve education in our country.”
Deborah Domingo, Representative, Secondary Group
“And there is the need to provide financing according to the needs of students. So it is not necessarily giving every student the same quantity of money to the school for his or her education, but recognising that each student has their own needs and trying to cater to that.”
Dativa Martinez, Representative, Special Education Group
“They are concerned about teacher training, that most teachers are still untrained. In fact, they heard that fifty-one percent of our schools are multi-grade and that many of these schools are still staffed by untrained teachers.”
Herbert Wiltshire, Rep., Truancy, Youth Governance Group
“Discipline in schools, primary and secondary. What has been taking place in our schools since they have taken out discipline as to whipping, and what my group basically said is that we should put that back in, implement that back once again so that more or less we get back to the basics of life. Because it has been pure chaos because when a talks they’re like, oh, she can’t do me nothing.”
Doreen Jones, Representative, Pre-School Group
“One of the main concerns is that of teachers, and specifically, the kind of financial returns that teachers get for the service that they offer.”
Leonard Mehia, Representative, Out of School Youths
“Open a little workshop for who all want to get, who seriously-when I mean seriously I noh mean play serious-seriously want to get back into school or seriously want to make a change or do some kind of vocational trade to further their lee education or their lee street knowledge. I think that dah the main idea, we need more youth work programmes.”
The 1990 Education Summit resulted in a number of actions including the establishment of Centres for Employment Training. Over a decade later, one special group, the Belize Kriol Project, is challenging the Ministry of Education to seriously consider their recommendation, A Kriol First Language Literacy initiative. According to project Secretary, Silvana Woods, the 1996 Language Education Policy states every child has the right to literacy in English and where pockets of students exist that speak a native language, each of those children also has the right to literacy in his or her own native language.
Silvana Woods, Secretary, Belize Kriol Project
“For those children, which is a large majority of our children who come to school knowing to speak their mother tongue of Kriol, what we are asking them to do is skip a number of steps and learn a skill called reading and writing, but in a language they do not use at home. And so before we get them into wanting to use English, let us teach them this skill of literacy in their home language so they can get immediate success so they can see the value of it, so that they can translate meaning from symbol it the language of thought that the use. Then, let’s transition them to the much needed international languages of English and Spanish.”
The reports compiled at the end of each consultation will be used as guide to plan for the upcoming National Education Summit scheduled for May.
Dian Castillo Maheia
“When the summit is finished the work is still not finished because in a way then it’s out of our hands and in the hands of the ministry. But the ministry has a directive from the people and from people all over the country who have said, these are the things that are important to us, these are what we have seen as problems, and these are some recommendations. So the plan for education over the next three years should not be made by people who do not know what’s going on. They would have heard what’s going on.”
From Belize City, the People’s Education Consultation moves to Orange Walk next week Tuesday. Jacqueline Woods reporting for News 5.
Consultations have previously been held in Toledo, Stann Creek, Corozal, and Cayo.
