The Kids Are Alright, Says Elena Smith

Elena Smith

Last Thursday, Senator for Trade Unions and Civil Society, Elena Smith, was outside the National Assembly, rallying her members as president of the Belize National Teachers’ Union in the fight against crime. Today, she was inside, reviewing the performance of the education and social sectors in the last year and the plans for the coming one. The B.N.T.U. and its partners have been attacked in some quarters for taking time away from the classrooms to protest national affairs. But Smith pointed out today that if the Ministry of Education’s own figures are to be believed, then the kids are doing just fine.

Elena Smith, Senator, Trade Unions

“But when I look further there’s a table that shows the percentage passing for P.S.E. – and I note if I can recall the numbers correctly that it says seventy-three point something percent. Despite the fact that we keep saying our teachers are not doing enough to teach our children, and that we are not doing as good as we should be doing, and we are taking time out to do our rally and it keeps the children back from their C.X.C. and their P.S.E. – percent of sitters with adequate or above performance on P.S.E., seventy-three percent; percent of CSEC examination entries earning satisfactory scores, seventy-one-point-five percent. I am not saying that what is there is the best that we can do. But what I’m saying, Madam President, is despite the fact that it is that we are blamed for taking action sometimes, these numbers that came from the Ministry, these are showing that despite all of that, that our children are still performing. And so it means that with the limited resources that our teachers have in our classrooms at the schools, that our teachers are still performing; despite all of our obstacles we are still performing. I will be the first to admit that we can do better; but we are not doing as bad as people want to think or that people put out there.”