What quality of education are our students receiving and just how many
of them have access to an education? Those are just two of many probing questions
that were asked and answered at a forum hosted by the Charles T. Hunter Commission
for Social Outreach, a resource center of St. John’s College. According
to the Resource Center Director Bernaldino Pech while it is not the first time
that the three topics have been discussed, there continues to be room for improvement
and they felt they had to do something to grab the attention of education stakeholders
because recent test scores show that high school students have been doing poorly
in critical subject areas.
Bernaldino Pech, Resource Center Director
“Of all the students who sat the CSEC exams or what most people know
as the CXC exams in math and English that there is a larger percentage of those
that are not being successful in those subject areas as opposed to as little
as four years ago. And so we feel that there is really a need. What quality
of service are we giving to our Belizean student, how are we developing the
young people of our country.
A large percentage of our population is below the age of 20 and we can
always construct more classrooms. As a former high school administrator certainly
it always breaks my heart when you have 200 or 250 applications for 170 spots
for example and it is something that is common in most of our secondary schools
so definitely not everybody who wants access is actually getting access.
It doesn’t matter where you live, whether in the city or in a rural
community. It doesn’t matter if your parents come from good social means
or no social means at all. All children deserve a good education.
We want to include all the stakeholders in education and that includes
the Ministry of Education, that includes teachers and administrators managing
authority and it also includes the parents. We want parents and the students
themselves to become active and to begin to ask these questions. What is quality?
Am I receiving quality when I step into a classroom? And we will be having early
in the New Year some workshops where we will focus more specifically on coming
up with strategies that may have emanated from the discussions today and looking
at concrete strategies. We want something tangible. We want something that the
educational system in Belize cannot actually work with and so we will be providing
the fora for that as well in the future. Additionally we will also be including
the presentations we have today in a subsequent edition of the Belizean Studies
Journal which SJC produces.”
According to Bernaldino Pech, the educational talks will continue and
SJC will also circulate articles on national issues that continue to affect
secondary schools in Belize. Pech says the primary goal is to spark a serious
academic discussion countrywide about the issues confronting education. Today’s
panelists included Chief Education Officer Christopher Aird, Principal of Wesley
College Brenda Armstrong, Principal of Dellile Academy Dina Villafranco and
Deborah Domingo the Dean of SJC Junior College School of Professional Studies.
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