Survey underway to reduce school dropout rate
While getting a good education is generally viewed as the best way to break the cycle of poverty, the poorest among us often have the hardest time staying in school. To find out what the greatest obstacles to academic achievement are for socially and economically disadvantaged families, a team from the Ministry of Education is canvassing the country. The twenty-five researchers are talking to students, their parents, teachers, principals as well as out of school children about everything from how much an average family spends to send a child to primary and secondary school, to difficulties faced by students whose first language is not English. Statistics indicate that as many as thirty percent of the nation’s children do not reach standard five. Ellajean Gillett, a researcher with the Ministry of Education, says concern over the high drop out rate and large numbers of children who are out of school led the Ministry to initiate the ten week survey which began yesterday.
Ellajean Gillett, Researcher, Ministry of Education
“We will be using it in the whole decision making process to see how best we can make provisions for those out of school children, how we can improve the quality of teaching as to whether it relates to, whether it’s the teaching of English, what strategies can be put in place to better facilitate that process. Looking at the some of the questionnaires we got, one of the questions we asked, “Which do you think should be the language of instruction in school?” and both students and parents as well as community members said it should be English because of, how to term it, it’s international currency.
It is almost like we sprang a surprise on them because there was no forewarning and the school opened yesterday and they heard of this study but we did not have much time to alert them to it. So we’re just asking them and the public at large to assist us in this process and be as frank as possible because there is no secret and it’s not gonna be used for any other purpose but to assist the Ministry in its decision making process to increase access and better the quality of education for our nation’s children.”
Seventy-nine government and government aided primary and secondary schools throughout the country will be included in the survey. It is being conducted with the support of the Education Sector Strategy and the proposed Belize Education Sector Improvement Project.
