Primary schools full, students turned away
There appears to be a crisis in Belize City elementary schools, and although it’s not clear whose fault it is, tonight there are children who won’t be going to school tomorrow. Some of them didn’t go to school for the whole of last year either. The reason? The city’s schools are simply too small, too crowded and too understaffed to take in any more children. Today one principal told us she had sixty children in one class, another principal vacated her own office and the school library to make new classrooms, a third told us she has been asked to take in children six, seven, even nine years old who had never been to school. Why the rush at the schools? Teachers cited migration from the districts, people returning from the States, but mainly the problem was parents who simply waited too long, for whatever reason to get their children in. Or, some parents have held their children back because they can’t get them into the school of their choice. Janelle Chanona reports on the overcrowding and its effect on the children.
Janelle Chanona
“Throughout Belize City today, “first-day jitters” were rapidly replaced by the simple truth that there is not enough space in the classroom.”
Q: “Tanya, how do you feel working so close to each other?”
Tanya Hernandez, Standard Six, Grace Primary School
“Well sometimes you feel like you can’t breathe and when you get up you have like, other people have to get up to give you room to pass.”
Q: “And when you’re working, does it bother you?”
Tanya Hernandez
“Sometimes. If you are left-handed and someone is right-handed, your hands touch each other.”
Q: “Lack of space in the classroom, what does that do for the quality of education?”
Cynthia Thompson, Principal, Bze Teachers’ Training College
“It reduces the amount, the larger the classroom, the less able the teacher is to deal with individual differences; the less space the teacher has to provide the kinds of materials, the space to do the kind of activities that you’d want that teacher to do and the amount of time that teacher has to devote to marking. And the preparation of materials for the children is reduced.”
At Grace Primary School, all classes are filled to capacity, with as many as sixty children in the lower division classes, fifty in the middle and forty in the upper. A number of parents were turned away on Monday and Tuesday. The children of Grace Primary are the only ones rubbing elbows. Molly Hulett, Principal of Holy Redeemer Lower Division, had to refuse children because of lack of space. And if the sight of overcrowded classrooms wasn’t bad enough, Hulett says she met parents willing to hold their children back another year just so they could get into the school of their choice. According to the Ministry of Education, this is illegal and they must do all they can to get their kids into school.
Q: “What are the alternatives now for the parents that can’t find spaces for their children?”
Molly Hulett, Principal, Holy Redeemer Lower Division
“I recommend that they find any school. They might not feel comfortable with the school but to make sure that their children are in school that they go to another school. I think the problem is that many parents want a specific school and some of them actually keep the child at home a whole year.”
According to Cynthia Thompson, overcrowded classrooms occur with most frequency in urban areas since there is limited space for expansion.
Cynthia Thompson
“If we look at pupil-teacher ratio for example in the urban schools opposed to the rural schools, you find that it is lower in the rural schools than it is in urban Belize. I was just looking at statistics recently and of our fifty-four thousand children as quoted in the Belize Ministry of Education Digest, there are at least fourteen thousand of those children in Belize City, in Belize’s urban area and those are located in thirty-six schools.”
Belizean teachers, specifically in those thirty-six schools, are now being forced to do more work in less time and in a smaller space while managing more children.
Molly Hulett
“Right here at my school, I notice that even during the lunch period my teachers are actually working on books. They stay back late in the evening, come early in the morning because they have to prepare the books before the children come to school.”
Even though natural indicators like birthrates are taken into account when planning for the new school year, no one could have predicted the number of children that showed up all dressed up in their uniforms with nowhere to go this year. The question is, where do those children turned out go, and will anything be put in place to prevent the problem next year? Janelle Chanona for News Five.
Chief Education Officer Dr. Cecil Reneau told News Five the Ministry of Education has yet to receive any complaints from schools about overcrowding. However, he says if schools call, the Ministry is willing to assist them with financial or human resources to make things more comfortable. If you are one of those parents whose child has no place to go, St. Mary’s School and Nazareen Primary School say they still have room. Any other school which still has space is asked to alert the public. Remember it’s illegal to keep your child home because you are waiting to get into a particular school and truant officers are on the streets again.
