Education minister explains that P.S.E. was no set-up
The minister, who also holds the portfolio for education, took the opportunity to soothe ruffled feathers in the teaching community. For the last two weeks Fonseca and education officials had been feeling the backlash from primary school teachers who feel they were “set-up” by being asked to take–and do poorly–on the P.S.E.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
“There are many, many good teachers in Belize, many wonderful teachers in Standard Six, but we can’t continue down this road and I’m very disappointed with the union’s position on this matter. We can’t continue down this road where we can’t critically examine teachers’ performance. It’s no state secret; it can’t be a state secret. As the Minister of Education, yes I have an obligation to work with teachers and the union, but I also have an obligation to the sixty-three thousand students in primary school and their parents and so when there is fundamental concern that arises from this exercise “Measuring Up” I have an obligation to share that with the Belizean people and say to them, listen all of us have to work together to address this problem. The ministry has to critically look at ourselves like we always do to see how we can improve and enhance the exam.”
“There was never any intention to shame or embarrass any teacher or group of teachers. Everything we did with respect to that matter was done in full consultation with both managers, the Association of Managers of Primary Schools and the Belize National Teachers Union, in fact as you know, they were both represented at the press conference. In fact, we’ve had discussions with them since last year following the results. In January we had a full workshop which I chaired and at that workshop I informed them that this is the process we will follow, the report had been prepared and we would share that report with managers and with them, and then with the public. And we do so, because as you know, following the exam results last year and it’s nothing new, I think every time we have the exam there is a lot of concern about the factors contributing to the poor performance of students on the P.S.E. For too long we’ve talked about it, talked about it but we have not really gone into it and dug deep. And I felt that we had to stop that. We had to get to the bottom of this, find out exactly what the factors are that are contributing to it. And that’s why one of the things we did, we did several other things, but one of the things we did was to bring together all the standard six teachers, have a workshop and as part of that workshop called “Measuring Up”, this measuring up exercise, we administered the mock P.S.E. exam to those teachers.”
Some teachers have threatened to boycott the administration of the P.S.E. to standard six students in May.
