Its the third week of the new school year and the majority of Belize's 65,000 primary school students still have not gotten their free textbooks. The news tonight however is that the Ministry of Education says more than half a million books have been delivered to 286 primary schools and your child should have books in their school bags by Friday. We know, that's what they said about Monday the 17th but this time, the folks at the Education Department say thy will meet the deadline. Deputy Chief Education Officer Allan Genitty told 7NEWS today that the problem of delivering the 600,000 books was logistical.
Allan Genitty, Deputy Chief Education Officer
"When you are thinking of the fact that its over 600.000 books that you're dealing with, when you think that infant one has eleven different books of which about five or six of them are workbooks. Standard 2 I think has eight different books so the undertaking was a big one where all the processing was the big problem in the books, the distribution was big too because of course our of 286 schools, over half them are rural schools - its hard to reach rural schools."
"There might be in some cases where for a grade level you might have too many books delivered to a school and in another grade level there might be a few shortages. All the principals have a requisition form that we keep on encouraging and reminding them to complete and send to the district center. So once that is done, we try to fill in wherever the gaps are."
Keith Swift,
Sir but don't you know think its unacceptable that today marks three weeks since school began and these students still haven't gotten their textbooks?
Allan Genitty,
"I think that's an over generalization. There might be some shortages in some areas but however as I mentioned before - once the principal gets the requisition forms to us, we'll do our best to get those corrected."
Keith Swift,
So did you not do enough planning?
Allan Genitty,
"As I mentioned before, the projected enrollment that we got from schools, in most cases does not fit in to what currently exists today."
"It seems like there are times when no matter how much you say, certain things are not getting across and we want to emphasize that we are doing out best to get the books to all the children across the country."
Of course that's what Education Minister Francis Fonseca told us two weeks ago. So why should we believe the Ministry now? Well the manager of 123 of those 286 schools says the books have been delivered. The General
Manager of Catholic Public Schools Clemente Wade told us this afternoon that the majority of his schools have received books.
Clemente Wade, General Manager - Catholic Public Schools
"I've been asking around to local managers and other personnel, I am talking about the whole country now, and most schools have gotten books, most schools have gotten most of their books. In some cases a few teacher's manuals are not present yet. In some cases a few books are still missing for certain classes. We have about 285 schools in the country, I have 123 and so there is a logistic nightmare to get a perfect match of books to children. So in many cases there are still a few books not gotten."
"They say hindsight is 20/20 and you could say what could have been done afterwards but as it is, most of the schools have been covered. There are still a few hiccups here and there."
Keith Swift
Aren't you concerned that we're three weeks into the new school year and some of thee kids still aren't working out of a textbook.
Clemente Wade,
"No that's not the case. You will notice that when parents used to buy books, a whole 30% of our country did not buy books. So schools were operating with 30% out and if it is one or 2% still missing their books - it's a lot. So what I am saying is that it's much better than it was."
The consensus of the principals we spoke to today was that they had gotten the majority of the books. Of course that's just half the work because the books will now have to be distributed to students. There are reportedly some schools where the books have already been distributed. And one more thing - before your child gets to take home his or her book, you the parent will have to sign a consent form making you liable if your child damages, destroys or loses his or her books.
