After 6 weeks of constant reading, 60 students participated, and the reader with the most hours logged was chosen. He and the other winners were awarded today in a ceremony held at the BTL Park. The organizers told us that this is part of the push in education to promote reading among students:

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"As Mr. Newport who is the head of our Quads Unit puts it this morning. If we can get more people in this country or every adult person in this country to read to children every day, it would have been a mission accomplish. But today is just another day in the work of our ministry, especially the Quads Unit and the Literacy Unit to promote reading to children every single day. It is a very important goal and we cannot do enough to try to continue to promote this effort."

Daniel Ortiz
"Can you talk to us about this competition where certain children were honored today for the amount of books they took on as a task to read?"

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"The initiative was really the brainchild of the Restore Belize group and of course we partnered with Restore Belize on many initiatives to promote education in this country. But it was really their initiatives and as I understand it, they worked very closely with the libraries that are a part of the work with the ministry, so that they could have acted as stations where children would go, read the books and of course make a reckoning of those books that they read to ensure that they read it and I was very pleased to hear the numbers this morning of these young persons who read so many books. It is a motivation and inspiration if you will for other children in this country to try to top. 56 books over the summer is no easy feat for the young man from All Saints and it should be an encouragement for all of us. Not only the young readers but also the adult readers."

Daniel Ortiz
"How effective is reading to your kids at night and keeping them engaged with literature?"

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"As I've said, from my own experience it is a very necessary thing. I have been able to get my boys excited about reading. Both of them are good readers, so when I ask the rest of the nation to participate in terms of reading to children today and every day, it is not only me preaching as the Minister of Education, but it is me as a parent who has actually engaged in this kind of thing and I recommend it one hundred percent."

But, while the Ministry is pushing reading as a past-time, recent figures from the Statistical Institute of Belize says that a large percent of the work force is under-educated. Is that an indictment of the Patrick Faber led Ministry of Education? That's what the media asked him today:

Reporter
"The SIB recently put out a statistic that said that 44% of the workforce has either a primary school education or below. How do you respond to that? What is your ministry looking into in terms of addressing that rather large number?"

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"Well we continue to do everything that we are doing now, to try to fix the problems of education in this country. The statistics I am glad for. In fact many of those who are listening on Friday to the senate meeting when I understand that Senator Lisa Shoman disclosed some of the report that we presented to the Caribbean Development Bank in order to facilitate that loan motion that was put there. They became frightened, almost like what is the ministry doing. Why are there statistics so alarming? Well, in our ministry we never keep it a secret that in fact we need to be working on these issues. The reason why the statistics are important is to show to all those who are concerned, the ministry especially, but all those who are concerned and that should be everybody - that these situations exists and that all the more reasons we should support the efforts put forward by our Ministry of Education and its partners in order to change the situation that exists in our Belizean education system."

Reporter
"Do you think the CDB report is an indictment of the ministry shortcomings?"

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"That's exactly the point that I made that I don't think at all. In fact we have never been like the ostridge. We don't bury our heads in the sand and pretend the problem is not there. We do have issues in the Belizean education system. We approach the CDB to borrow, you've seen some exorbitant amount of monies in order to fix the issues that we are having with education."

The young man who you saw holding the laptop in his hands is Daejon Myles, and he is the participant who read the most books. This All Saint Student consumed a total of 56 books in 6 weeks, and he was given the laptop as his first prize. The second place was Thomas Palma from Muslim Community Primary school. He read 32 books.