Patrick Faber explains his ministry’s undertaking to boost southern performance
Patrick Faber
On Wednesday the top twenty-five brilliant PSE scorers were recognized in Belize City. The students that scored best were from the Belize, Orange Walk and Cayo districts, but there were none from the Stann Creek and Toledo districts. Since the BNSE evolved into the P.S.E eleven years ago, results have been the poorest in those two districts. For this reason, we asked Minister Patrick Faber what his ministry is doing to boost the performance in the south.
Patrick Faber, Ministry of Education & Youth
“This Ministry has made over the last few years some much targeted interventions in the south. Of course, again it takes time to see these interventions come to fruition. For instance we rolled out the PET Program, which is the Caribbean Center for Excellence in Teacher Training Program. We’ve now formed that into the Belize Literacy Unit in the Ministry of Education and Toledo and Stann Creek are two of the districts, the first two districts that we rolled out the program to. This program aims at intervening very early, in the early stage of the children’s education to make sure that they can read and write properly to make sure that they are onboard in terms of where we need to go in numeracy, so we expect to see fruits of that. We of course, instituted the training program for the teachers in the banana belt area along with the European Union. Training for primary school teachers, training for high school teachers, we have insisted of course on creating more space in terms of high school access. So there is a lot that we hope will boil over in to successes in terms of the southern districts.”
This is unacceptable for the south; an area of predominately intelligent people. What is going on? For the country to progress there has to be equality of education…HOLD THE TEACHERS ACCOUNTABLE. There are many, many of them of teachers that I question their ability and qualifications. I would prefer to keep my children at home than to have them be thought be some of these “educators.” Re-train teachers, raise the standards and fire the ones who are not able to rise to the challenge. The minister needs to study the DC public school system and possibly adopt that approach.
please no go adopt nothing from the us they are the wose in education in the world today if you want look to europe for answers not the us pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
I cited that approach because DC public Schools chose an unorthodox, unconventional, possibly unamerican approach to revitilize that area’s education system; so I think that we are on the same page. It was not very popular among the traditionalists, but that is why it could work in Belize. Like any country or system, even in the face of gross mistakes and failures, there are things that could be adopt to improve our system. This is one of them.
I f Hon. Faber really want change in the south especially the Stann Creek district and in the rural primary school, he need to flex more , more muscle on how principal are recruited in the primary school. they are leaders and should be accountable to what happen in their schools. the school has ended and now the same unqualified principals are installed to lead for the next school year. what the district education managers has to say about this? do they really want change? they have completed school assessments of each primary schools and what major changes have they recommended? what has been happening in the south is that there are some trained and experienced teacher in the school but they were never given chance to prove themselves. Many times the outcome of school evaluation is brushed under the table and you don’t hear anything else again.