U.S. project assists literacy education
A U.S. sponsored project to improve teacher education was launched this morning. The initiative, called the Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training, is part of a broad regional effort to improve the teaching of literacy in primary schools. At ceremonies held this morning at the Biltmore Plaza, Prime Minister Said Musa assessed the situation of quality in the schools.
Prime Minister Said Musa
“I think our teachers, many of them have to recognize that we have a long way to go in terms of providing quality education to our children. They are being short changed in many respects, and often times it’s the schools in the rural communities that get the worse of it. Some of them have teachers who are not even high school graduates, much less any training in teacher education. This is changing, and we are seeing a lot of improvement in teacher education. We have seen the percentage going up now in terms of trained teachers, but we still cannot sit on our laurels. We cannot be comfortable with the level that we have. We still have to do a lot more in terms of teacher training and teacher education.”
Professor Errol Miller, Project Director, CCETT
“There is much to be proud of in Belizean education. But the fact of the matter is, the standards of the past are no good today. Much higher standards are demanded, much greater levels of education are demanded, so that whereas in the past people defined literacy in terms of being able to recognize simple words: rat, cat and bat and sign your name, that basic standard is out. The standard that evolved, the functional standard of being able to read the newspaper and understand its meaning is also out today. We are moving to higher levels of literacy in which its application standards, be able to use one’s level of literacy to do various things, to fill out complex forms, to find information in various places.”
The programme, which will unfold over the next five years, initially targets six primary schools: All Saints, Central Christian, Guadalupe R.C., Burrell Boom Methodist, St. Luke’s Methodist and Salvation Army.
