Vocational education receives major funding

Belizean students who plan on making a career as skilled tradesmen or women now have more opportunities to learn their craft. This is thanks to a twenty-six million dollar Caribbean Development Bank loan signed this morning. CONALEP from neighboring Mexico will also provide technical assistance to the project. Education Minister Cordel Hyde says the newly appointed fifteen member National Training Council will oversee the project’s implementation.

Cordel Hyde, Minister of Education

“We have to smash the stereotype that only “slow, un ambitious” persons do vo-tech education or go to CET. We’ll have to employ an aggressive public education campaign, coupled with increased promulgation of our success stories. Studies show that the technical high schools are basically producing basic and semi-skilled persons and the tertiary institutions are producing supervisors, managers, and professionals. The studies show that there’s a place for CET’s to meet the demand of skilled craftsmen and technicians.”

“The National Training Council is critical to the success of this project. It is you the members of this agency who will constantly monitor and grade the project. It is you who will inform the CET’s of just what those skills are that our graduates should have. Too often in the past education was delivered quite apart and separate from the persons we are really producing the graduates for: the employers.”

The project includes the construction of five additional Centres for Employment Training: one each in Belize City, Orange Walk, Corozal, Stann-Creek and Toledo.