A Competency-Based Approach to Education in Belize

A large portion of our lives are spent acquiring knowledge and developing skills through education.  At the foundation of our academic pursuit is a curriculum. According to the Belize Education Sector Plan, on the surface, a curriculum is compromised of a list of topics, objectives and strategies that are used by teachers to develop content. On a deeper level, a curriculum can be viewed as society’s way of imparting knowledge, skills, beliefs and attitudes to a student that will lead to a desired social, behavioral and economic outcome. Therefore, education can become irrelevant and national development compromised, when there is no alignment between the two. The Ministry of Education has found this to be the reality in Belize’s education sector. As a result, it established a thirteen-member Curriculum Reform Steering Committee to develop a National Curriculum Framework. The framework is aimed at transitioning to competency-based education. News Five’s Paul Lopez takes a closer look at the Ministry of Education’s curriculum reform process in this week’s Five Point Breakdown.

Paul Lopez, Reporting

What is Competency-Based Education?

Natalia Montes is among a group of primary school students engaged in a four-week summer program in coding.

Natalia Montes

Natalia Montes, Std. Six Student, Orange Walk New Life Presbyterian Primary School

“This is sprites, not the sprites you drink. It is a character in a character in a game or animation that moves or behaves in like a game, like Pac-Man, Mario, you could see that when you are offline dinosaur. This is the tube box, this is the play area and this is the instruction. The instruction says the fish is getting dizzy; we will make it swim left and right.”

Montes and her peers are applying numerous skills during the time spent in their coding class. Those skills include effective communication, critical and innovative thinking, collaboration and digital literacy. Character development and emotional intelligence are also employed during their daily closing sessions, when the class gathers to discuss the lessons learned for that day and the challenges faced.

Judy Bautista

Judy Bautista, Coding Instructor

“How many of you found challenges today? Alright did you give up when you found a challenge? No, because remember we said, we only fail when we do not try, ok great, high five, let me check your lessons.”

Why Curriculum Reform?

As commonplace as this approach to learning may be, it differs greatly from the traditional educational approach. Judy Bautista, the coding instructor, uses what is known as a competency-based approach. The focus here is not only on knowledge or what the child knows, but he or she must also be able to demonstrate that they can apply what they know and that they have acquired positive values in the process. Dr. Louis Zabaneh, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, explained why Belize’s education sector is transitioning towards competency based education.

Louis Zabaneh

Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, Ministry of Education

“So the short answer is poor student performance, poor student performance both within the education system in terms of when they do summative exams or when they do a little bit of the formative exams that are being done. But, most importantly the responses that we get from the private sector and other none governmental sectors, that our students have many gaps when they come for an interview. There is a letter that is sent, maybe requested and even in the letter you see many errors in how they cannot handle the English language well, they cannot communicate well.”

The Belize National Curriculum Framework is guiding the transformation of Belize’s education sector. The forty-page document lists seven key learning areas including, language, mathematics, expressive arts, physical education and wellness.

How Are Competencies Assessed?

Contrary to traditional, standardized assessments, competency-based assessments aim to evaluate and build the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the learner.  Claribel Cocom is an itinerant officer for the new competency-based curriculum. As a teacher, she has spent the last two decades in the classroom.

Claribel Cocom

Claribel Cocom, Itinerant Officer, Ministry of Education

“In traditional we have test, we have quizzes, we have the normal exams at the end of the units. So, students will be categorized based on that. It is a one cap fits all. In competency it is different, it is ongoing formative assessments. It is a lot feedback that will guide the students and it will guide the teachers, so the students know exactly where they are and what competency they need to master. You have some students failing a test. It is not that they didn’t learn the lesson. It is just that they are not good at pen and pencil. So, when it comes to competency they will be able to tell me in a different manner how I learnt that concept.”

Eleven-year-old Jahiem Coc is on the third lesson in his coding class. The instruction given to him is to collect all the treasures as seen on the monitor.  But, as he attempts to do so, he is faced with a challenge. He must now apply critical and innovative thinking, along with his reading skills and digital literacy to solve the problem. He quickly makes the necessary corrections and completes the instruction for lesson three.

Paul Lopez

“How would somebody use lessons like this in the real world scenario?”

Jahiem Coc

Jahiem Coc, Std. Six Student, St. Andrews Anglican School

“Well maybe this might be helpful if you are going to be a technician or maybe you are just one of those mechanics that fix phones and then reprogram the phone to make sure there isn’t any virus in it. So I feel like technician would be the best choice in this being helpful in the future.”

The Importance of Digital Literacy

One of the primary features of the Ministry of Education’s National Curriculum Framework is digital literacy. The objective of this competency area is to have students move from being merely consumers to being active creators of digital content. Adriani Coleman is a Digital Learning and Development Specialist at Digital Learning and Pedagogy Solutions. She explained why, of all seven competencies outlined in the framework, digital literacy is a priority.

Adriani Coleman

Adriani Coleman, Digital Learning and Development Specialist

“The digital is very important in the curriculum, because the development of the technology impacts industry which is very important. But in order to prepare our students for that type of industry, we need to train them how to use the technology in a creative way, in a collaborative way, in a way that they are using their critical thinking skills so that they can survive in the modern industry that they will face when they are done with school.”

The Challenges of Curriculum Reform

The Ministry of Education piloted its National Curriculum Framework during the 2021/2022 school year. According to Dr. Zabaneh, qualitative data shows signs of improvements in students across the country. One challenge is that some teachers are reluctant to embrace this approach than others. On one hand, the approach will require a greater degree of thoughtfulness and creativity in developing lessons plans. On the other hand, teachers need training.

Dr. Louis Zabaneh

“That I think is where we are going to have as much to do to be able to get our teachers up to that level and that is going to take some time. So we feel that over the next two to three years we are going to try to get teachers all at one level across the country so that they can try to implement competency based education.”

Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.