New Education Minister will continue policies

While on the subject of education, the new man in charge of the ministry, Francis Fonseca, says he sees no reason to deviate from the course that he and his predecessor, Prime Minister Said Musa, have charted over the last ten months.

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education

“We want to continue building on that foundation that we’ve laid over the last year in terms of improving access to education for our children throughout our country.”

“And we want to continue improving access, but we also want to concentrate much more on quality education, ensuring that when our children come to school that they don’t only have a new building, a nice building in which they can sit, but that the education that they are getting in that classroom is a quality education, providing them with a well rounded sort of outlook on life. So quality is very important. We want to continue to emphasise teacher training to make sure that our teachers are better trained. We want to make sure that we continue to emphasise our reading program because one of the fundamental concerns we have at the Ministry of Education is that our children are not reading enough.”

Fonseca says that slippage in the literacy rate is in part attributable to population growth and an influx of immigrants from neighbouring countries. Compared to the rest of the region Fonseca says Belizean literacy still looks good, but we must not be content to let the situation remain static.