With teachers in Belmopan, city school attendance mixed

While teachers spearheaded today’s protests in Belmopan, what was happening in their classrooms? News Five’s Kendra Griffith checked out the schools in Belize City and found varying degrees of attendance.

Clement Wade, Manager, Catholic Schools
“The schools mostly affected were St. Ignatius and Holy Redeemer. But even in those cases, St. Ignatius had a fairly good turnout and the principals are handling things. Holy Redeemer, because of the very low turnout of teachers, had to send home children.”

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
We found shuttered windows and doors at St. Ignatius this morning and according to the principal, a majority of the teachers and students were no-shows.

At St. Martin de Porres, the teacher turnout was better than the students’. Principal Roselda Sinclaire counted eighteen of her twenty-three teachers present, but only about forty students, mostly standard sixers, showed up. It should be noted that four classes were out due to scheduled school trips.

The Catholic exception was St. Joseph’s where it was mostly business as usual. Management reported that thirty-one of their forty-two teachers were present and the vast number of students showed up for classes.

When it came to the Anglican schools, we couldn’t get any figures out of St. John’s Primary, but management was reporting that most of their students and teachers were accounted for. Queen Square Principal Melva Mortis Told News Five that only one hundred seventy-five of the nine hundred enrolled students came to class, along with about half of her teachers. Attendance was most sparse at St. Mary’s where only twenty-five children were sent to school. Almost all of the teachers were absent and they did not have any classes in the afternoon.

At St. Luke’s Methodist, almost all standard six students were present due to a scheduled mock P.S.E., but the rest of the divisions didn’t fare as well. As for teachers, only eleven out of twenty-eight went to work.

According to Manager of Catholic Schools, Clement Wade, a lot of parents chose to keep their kids home due to the uncertainty of the situation.

Clement Wade
“The turnout was poor in some areas, not because there weren’t teachers, but because there were—the parents were a little scared, was uncertain, nobody gave them any inclination of what would be the case in classes this morning.”

“One thing I must commend my administrators, my principals and the administrative vices, they all showed today. So in all my schools responsible people were there to see that everything went smoothly.”

That was true for all the schools we visited. Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.

During our rounds, News Five noted that officials from the Ministry of Education were also visiting city schools to assess the situation.