7 News Belize

Minister Of Education Warns Unlicensed Teachers
posted (June 4, 2014)

At the top of tonight’s news – we told you about the proposed resource sharing between three government managed city schools. Â A still unknown number of the 61 teachers at the three schools will get declared redundant and then become eligible for lifetime pension. Â The 19 trained teachers will probably get first option at keeping their jobs – but when only 19 of 61 teachers – about 30% - are trained – that helps to explain why the schools have high numbers of students who drop out or repeat. Â Of course, there are so many other factors that go into that….but teachers who don’t have a background in pedagogy is surely a large part of it. Â And that’s why today Education Minister Faber warned teachers who are not fully certified – to do so as soon as possible:

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"Because we've now made a decision in this ministry to say to all of those teachers who hold a provisional license in the classroom - I think the starting point where they were given those provisional licenses may have been 2011 - and you were told that within that 5-year period, you are to get your pedagogical or professional development, and there are many who have not. Even at this point now, where we are 3 years later, even if a teacher who is in that situation, now enrols for the start of this upcoming school year, that teacher might find himself/herself caught with the deadline, and we're saying that those teachers need to leave the teaching profession. It is not something that is pleasant. If we are serious about changing the system, we need to be serious. Nobody - and I mean nobody - even our greatest critics can now accuse of not having provide opportunities for teachers to upgrade themselves, and where those teachers insist on sitting down and refusing to take the opportunities, I am sorry, we will have to crack the whip on that situation. I'm hoping, and I'm appealing to my friends from the media, and to my friends from the BNTU, and the other people who are loud at times, to support us because if you want the system to be fixed, these are the unpleasant measures that come along with it."

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