Consultations Ongoing on New National Competency-based Curriculum

Francis Fonseca

Consultations have been ongoing on the new national competency-based curriculum as it is being piloted during this transition year. Just last week, a delegation of education stakeholders, led by Minister of State Doctor Louis Zabaneh, visited with teachers and principals in the Corozal District. It was an opportunity for them to express concerns and ideas about the new curriculum, which is to be implemented in full for the new school year in September. The curriculum reform seeks to develop skills and attitudes in children to prepare them for the sustainable human development of Belize. Education Minister Francis Fonseca was asked for an update on the consultations and here’s what he had to say.

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education

“The second round of consultations is taking place now. Again, it is a pilot project as you rightly said so this entire year, we are focusing on the primary level and then we hope to move to the high school level with our new curriculum framework. So this round of consultations is really after a few months that it has been in place to get some feedback, to get some level of assessment, if you like, of how the curriculum is working, what changes do we need to make, what tweaks have to take place. So it is a very important exercise. It is being led by Minister Doctor Louis Zabaneh, who I’ve asked to be in charge of that initiative. So I think this is a useful exercise. We have our partners with us, the B.N.T.U., all of the managements – everyone is a part of this consultation process. We expect this process to last a few more weeks and at the end of that exercise, we will sit down and review all of the feedback we get and determine how we move forward so that come August, we can have a complete rollout of that new curriculum across the country.”

The delegation will continue its countrywide tour and a similar effort will commence in March of this year for high schools.