Education Ministry Eyes Better Results

While the overall performance in the P.S.E. is considered average, there are some areas that are still lacking. The Ministry of Education says that there is incremental growth despite the overall percentage.  Nelson Longsworth, Director of Examination Unit, says that the ministry continues to employ a number of methods to tackle some of the problem areas.

Nelson Longsworth, Director of Examination Unit, MoE

“On the average, and average is not the accurate way to describe the performance, but if you just go straight to the average, schools like – the average results for Corozal continues to be the top district, followed by Orange Walk, then Cayo and Belize District follows fourth. So, even though you find a lot of the top twenty-five from the Belize District, it doesn’t reflect totally on the districts; so we definitely have to work on those schools that are not performing well. Fifth is Stann Creek and then Toledo is sixth. I hate to compare because the dynamics are so different; the collection of schools are so different; the management of schools are so different, but if you just want to use the average and say find the results that is how they lay out.”

Nelson Longsworth

Andrea Polanco

“The south – traditionally it has always been – or they haven’t done well as in first, second or even third for quite a while – is there anything that the Ministry is looking at in terms of implementing whether it is from a curriculum perspective or management?”

Nelson Longsworth

“Definitely the curriculum unit is working on a whole lot of initiatives. Myself not too in tuned with all they are doing, but they are certainly going after improving teachers – so they improve teaching and learning; improve school planning when looking at the agenda and as you say looking at the way how Math, Science and Social Studies and English are being taught because that again is where we believe some of the problems lie in those areas and they are working at it.  We definitely make use of these results and we use them in determining how we move forward and more importantly how school make use of it to determine what adjustments they have to make and that is very significant. It is unfortunate that we see the schools repeating the same thing with the same results. So, it is not just the Ministry, but the schools when they are developing their plans how they can use these results to make changes to improve student performance and that is the bottom line. Some do use it and I am not sure if some don’t, but the system we have in place is the District Centers go in frequently and monitor what they are doing or coming closer to determine who are and who are making plans and supporting them with those plans.”