And just as Grace Primary's new school building went up, 35 more schools are expected to be built around the country. It is the rollout of the second phase of the Belize Education Sector Reform Project, an ambitious but very necessary undertaking according to Education Minister Patrick Faber:
Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"This is a CDB loan that we are receiving; it is 70 million dollars, 35 new schools that are going to be built across the country. 22 of them are preschools, our focus we make no mistake, no apologies, we focus on early childhood education, we believe in children starting strong and then the rest of the monies will be spent on primary and a few secondary schools."
Courtney Weatherburne
"When do you all plan on rolling out this very large project?"
Hon. Patrick Faber
"Well the monies have been secured as you've heard, in fact it has been taken to the house, it is a loan and in fact we are identifying the land actually, that is the hold up. We need to make sure that we have in our possession the land certificates and so on before we can move and that process I am told is what is holding us up but as soon as we do that we're going to roll out and start construction across the country."
Courtney Weatherburne
"What do you have to say in terms of some people saying that you don't need more schools, you need to amalgamate some of those schools because we already have a lot."
Hon. Patrick Faber
"Indeed that is our push but we want people to know that these schools are not just being put where ever for whatever. In fact the areas that the schools are being placed have been identified as the areas of need, the area of future needs as well. We did a thorough school mapping exercise to ensure that we're putting the schools in the right place. Now this means some controversy even politically in my own party because of course every representative wants a school in their area and so and we've had to say no, the mapping exercise shows that this is not an ideal place, this is not a place that there is projected growth so we don't put it there, we will put it here."
The project includes 22 new pre-schools, five primary schools, and eight secondary schools and it is also funded by the CDB.
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