The Ministry of Education is working with the Commonwealth of Learning to prepare a model for local open school. The basic idea is to have online classes for that portion of the population which needs adult and continuing education because they've dropped out of school.
The Ministry has a huge problem on its hands because there's a significant percentage of the youth population who cannot fond a place in high school, or who drop out before getting a high school diploma. So, the solution being looked at is education over the internet. In a 3-day workshop, the Ministry of Education's Adult and Continuing Education Services Unit has been sitting with managers of the Technical vocation and education schools, as well as those evening division schools countrywide to figure out how it would work. Their focus is on the policy management for potential open schools.
We stopped by to speak with the coordinators and here's how they explained it:
Dr. Sheldon Samuels - MOE, Adult & Continuing Education Services
"The workshop where we are bringing together managers of the ITVET's and directors and administrators of the evening divisions countrywide, and the purpose for bringing them together is because of the fact that we are trying to put together - we are trying to get our teachers from the evening division, and the ITVET's to develop learning content for the online - or E-Learning platform. So with this workshop today, it's actually trying to give the managers and the directors the sort of knowledge, or informing, so that they can provide the sort of support, that teachers would need over the next year in terms of when they actually writing their curriculum for the E-Learning platform."
"What we are trying to do relatively new, but it is in our Belize Education Sector Strategy, where we are trying to see how we could use online materials - well, online and multi-media materials to develop programs for online users. We're trying to target, in terms of trying to increase access to the out of school population."
"We have a crisis. We have a huge portion of our population that is out of school. I think yesterday in the newscast, the Senior supervisor indicated that out of 5 students, 3 are not in school, and that is not sustainable. It has a rippling effect in terms of crime, violence and the like. So, we believe that by putting together this E-Learning program, or by developing content for the E-Learning platform, that we will be able to attract that out-of-school population, so that they will be able to access education."
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"How do you balance the difficulties that the internet - the distractions that the internet itself inherently has? You have facebook, youtube, websites. All these things could be distracting a student from learning itself."
Dr. Johan Hendrikz - Representative, Commonwealth of Learning
"It is a challenge throughout the world, how do you control the learning environment to the internet. Well, here's the thing. If a child has access outside of the school, they will also be able to access all these negative sides if they really want to. What is the essence? It's to guide a child, especially when it comes to the learning environment, that this instrument, his phone, or his computer is a valuable tool to be used for bad purposes or for good purposes."
There are 11 evening divisions countrywide, and at least 1 evening division in every district. The workshop continues tomorrow.
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