Might Strike Hurt P.S.E. Results?

While this year’s results are due around the beginning of June, a month after the second half of the exam has been completed; Primary School Examination results have not been encouraging over the years.  English and Math scores have hovered around the low to mid-fifties, with Science and Social Studies scores only slightly higher.  Much of the blame has centered around poor preparation for the examination and communication of the material to students.  While programs have been put in place to address Math in particular, this year saw an added complication with eleven days of teaching time lost to the Belize National Teachers’ Union’s strike in October. Minister of Education Patrick Faber said he hopes that will not turn out to be a factor if results are the same as before or regress.

Patrick Faber

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

“As people are aware, the results over the last more than a decade have been not what we want them to be at all; and we keep on working at that, particularly as it relates to Math. Math continues to be a major challenge, and the Ministry, some years ago, initiated measures that would eventually see some movement in terms of the Math grades; we are hoping that this year will be a bit different in that those results will reflect positively in terms of the interventions that we have put in place, and we’re hoping that our students will perform well overall. Of course there are factors that we know exist and we’re hoping those factors will be minimal. And that includes, of course, the eleven days of strike that occurred in this school year. We are hoping that the children were able to put that away, basically, and that they were able to focus; we are hoping that parents as well as teachers were able to work with the standard six students to make sure that that number of days lost would not affect them in a tremendous way on these exams today and when they take the second part.”