BELIZE CITY, Wed. Apr. 27, 2022 — The Minister of Education, Culture, Science, and Technology, Hon. Francis Fonseca, has stated that the Ministry’s plan for curriculum reform in the country’s education system will be put into motion this August. That plan will be focused on what he calls “fundamental reform.”
“The curriculum is absolutely overloaded. It’s absolutely overloaded, and we intend to reduce what they call learning outcomes. We have talked about this already, and make sure that our students are learning what matters— it’s critical,” stated the Minister.
In a country like Belize, says Fonseca, it is imperative to remember that education has to be tied to national, and economic, development.
“So we have to be educating our people to be a part of growing Belize, of developing Belize, and equipping them with the skills, the knowledge, the information, the values, the attitudes they need to be effective participants in the development of Belize,” he remarked.
Along with its plan for curriculum reform, one of the main challenges facing the Ministry currently is recovering the years of learning that students have lost due to the pandemic.
“Our students have been effectively out of the classroom for two years. Yes, we’ve tried to do learning packages and we’ve done some virtual learning, but there’s no replacement for the classroom. And so there has been a loss of learning. And so we have specific plans aimed at addressing those gaps that have been created over the last two years,” he stated.
When asked whether that recovery will affect the curriculum reform plan in any way, Minister Fonseca said that the two initiatives will be taking place side by side:
“They are two separate things, but the whole idea behind curriculum reform is to provide, you know, a more, a better quality education to our students. So the two things will run together, parallel. We intend to unveil the new curriculum, again, in August as well. And that new curriculum, I think, will be a much more effective curriculum, a much more focused, much more targeted curriculum. And so that as well will provide us with an opportunity to focus more on recovery. So I see the two things as being parallel, working together,” he said.
Hon. Fonseca also noted that the Ministry is feeling confident about the countrywide return to full-time face-to-face learning. He stated that another of their main priorities at the moment is getting those students who have not yet returned to the classroom in some form to do so, as the number varies from district to district. While over 80% of students in the northern part of the country returned to school, other communities have only seen around 60% of their students returning.
“We have a lot of work to do in that regard—making sure that everybody feels safe and that people understand and appreciate the importance and the urgency of getting their children back into the classroom,” he stated. At present, students have not been having classes on Fridays—a part of the agreement that the Government had made with the unions after negotiating the terms of public officers’ 10% salary cut. But according to Hon. Francis Fonseca, that will change come August, since public workers will have their salaries fully reinstated on July 1st. As a result, the new school year will see students returning to a full five-day school week.