Minister of Education Says Itz’at STEAM Academy Will Be Ready for September

The Itz’at STEAM Academy, located on the IT-VET compound in Belize City, is geared to provide lessons in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math – collectively referred to as STEAM subjects. For the Ministry of Education, it’s a new approach that seeks to provide a new, transformative secondary school education for students. It was developed in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the I.D.B. It will begin with a first cohort of seventy-five first form students and that number will grow over time to around three hundred by 2026. Today, the Minister of Education, Francis Fonseca told the media that the entire compound will not be finished in time for the new school year in September, but that the first building will be ready and they will start from there.

Francis Fonseca

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education

“I am assured that it will be ready. The entire structure will not be ready August, but one of the buildings, so we will start with one of the buildings, which should be completed at the end of July. And then I am told that the other building will be completed the end of August. So yes, there’s a lot of work going on there. I think they have like 96 people working on the building with a sense of urgency, so I’m confident we’ll be able to start. And then, as I said, in a month or two later, the entire project will be completed, but, we have a plan to start.”