Ministry announces adjustments to education system

Patrick Faber

The Ministry of Education today announced a series of adjustments to the education system. The forum was a press conference presided by the Minister, Patrick Faber, to outline the changes and more importantly, why they have become necessary.  The detailed event lasted for well over two hours at the IT Vet building on the old Technical College compound in Belize City.  Following the forum, attended by teachers, principals and Ministry of Education personnel, News Five asked the Minister to put the changes into perspective.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

“What we found was that some of the offices in the Ministry were placed out of where they should have been placed, so just have brought them back in line.  We put some key areas like the Teaching Services Commission and the policy and planning unit under the specific control of certain areas of the Ministry so that people can become more accountable. We also made sure that we have proper staffing for all of our units, make sure they have the kind of resources that they need in order to be efficient so that we can work towards saving a lot of money.  These services are in an effort to make life better for Belizeans.  The recent studies on poverty will show that it seems we are getting poorer but initiatives like the subsidy, like training of our teachers and so on will help us to live a better quality life so that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps to make sure that we have a better standard of living.”

Marion Ali

“While you’ve made those strides in education, there is also the other side; so many children still not making it from primary school to high school, the level of performance in the exams—regional and local exams—what’s being done to address those issues?”

Patrick Faber

“Well, I think it will be fair to say that in the regional exams, we have been improving. I think we have a bigger problem with the performance at the local level. What I outlined this morning was a strategy as to how we can do that. But I hasten to point out to people that it’s not going to happen overnight. Fixing what is wrong with the PSE for instance is not something that we can fix just like that. We pointed out that we have strengthened the QUADS unit of the ministry with a literacy unit. We try to capture literacy problems from a very early stage. I’m talking about infant one, infant two, standard one to see where our children are falling down because literacy is the key thing. If we wait until they cant pass the PSE Math or English and then we say dah di standard six teacher or they get to high school and the high school blames the primary school. But it is up to us and we’re putting in place the kind of diagnostic testing that will capture failures to read and to deal with numeracy and so at the very early stage.”