Excelsior High will remain open to current students

There is a major change to report about the future of Excelsior High School. For weeks parents, teachers and students of the high school have vociferously resisted a proposal by the Ministry of Education to relocate students and shift the focus the school. That would have meant that teachers and students would have been displaced on the eve of the new school year. But late Tuesday night after hours of discussions behind closed doors, there was a reversal of that position. The decision was taken to keep Excelsior open to the current students; one hundred and thirty-seven of them. Those that have applied elsewhere are invited to return to the institution. The ministry did not abandon all its plans and it was agreed that the school will be offering remedial courses to disengaged youths. But how will this be accomplished? To begin with the classes will be offered on a shift basis and instead of August twenty-third, Excelsior will reopen on August thirtieth.  News Five got the details from Ministry officials as they emerged from the meeting on Tuesday night.

Patrick Faber, Ministry of Education

“It was never a consideration to close down Excelsior High School. We thought of a shift in the way we do things as an institution and that meant for us being able to cater in a different way to the needs of those students who are between the ages of ten and fifteen/sixteen. There were clamors from the community and in fact the technical people in the ministry tried to find a way to make sure that people understand that the mission of the ministry if not to take away anybody’s opportunity but also we wanted to make sure that we got the best bang for the buck.”

David Leacock, C.E.O., Ministry of Education

david leacock

“We debated it, we discussed it and we basically tried to find a resolution that would address the concerns that we had as well as the concerns that the parents and the teachers here at Excelsior here has. And we believe that we’re able to find a resolution that would see our all of our concerns effectively addressed.”

Patrick Faber

“We’re saying let us have a smaller curriculum because the curriculum of nine or ten subjects is not working out clearly here. Let’s have a smaller curriculum, let’s focus on strengthening that, let’s make it five subjects and lets add in some other things in this curriculum that we believe will be beneficial to the type of students that we’re catering to here. By that I mean putting in vocational options or other options that will be attractive to students. Clearly the kind of students that this program will be targeting will be those who are not happy with a formal academic setting that exists in other schools so we have to do something to keep their attention.”

Minister of Education, Patrick Faber weighed in today, saying that there will be more students will benefit from the new changes.  But how do the teachers feel about the changes?  According to their principal, Gayle Thompson, the teachers feel comfortable with Tuesday night’s decision.

gayle thompson

Gayle Thompson, Principal, Excelsior High School

“The teachers are comfortable with the decision made by the ministry to retain the school in its current status and gradually phasing out after the current third and fourth form students complete. What the Ministry’s position is that they want to revisit the curriculum offerings that we have currently to streamline it to provide a more strengthened curriculum for the students who come to Excelsior High School.”

Patrick Faber

“In the second shift we want to especially target a larger group of students, who we still are not certain what categories they fall in and that is why we are working overtime now along with the Ministry of Human Development and Social Transformation and the N.C.F.C. in order to clearly outline what categories these students fall in so that we are able to create a curriculum that will best serve them.”

Marion Ali

“At the end of the day though, what you have is not what you had set out—or what the Ministry had set out to accomplish. It was only mainly focused at students who are out of school who want to further their education and maybe with more emphasis on skills training. But now you have a combination of both; will it not be overbearing or an overload on the ministry to try to meet both demands?”

Patrick Faber

patrick faber

“No, not at all. In fact, this is a smaller initiative of something greater that we’re doing, trying to take all of these young people off these streets and, of course, making sure that they are occupied in a positive way.”

David Leacock

“Whenever you’re trying to bring more things and new things, there are going to be challenges. But I think the situation that we have in Belize right now, I think we have to do something and we have to start. So we have to find the wherewithal to address these challenges so that’s what we’re trying to do here at Excelsior.  Beginning on Monday of next week, the Ministry of Education and Youth along with the Ministry of Human Development and other agencies, under the auspices of Restore Belize, will be doing kind of a house to house sweep of the city to identify young people, whether they be primary school aged or older, who we think ought to be enrolled back in school or some type of program. Those that we find that are eligible to enroll back in a high school program, maybe they dropped out within the last year or two, we’re going to offer them the opportunity to some of the spaces that we would have here at Excelsior.”

Well, for now it seems that all’s well that ends well.