And in other news, the students of Excelsior High School today received 54 brand new laptops. These devices went to those students who needed them the most to help them keep up with the Ministry of Education's new curriculum. And it's all a part of the ministry's project to implement free education, starting with those schools on the southside.
Courtney Menzies was at the handing over ceremony this morning and has this story.
Over half the students at Excelsior High School have taken home brand new laptops today, courtesy of the Ministry of Education. It's part of their pilot project to provide free education to Southside schools. And this project doesn't just include tuition, but also access to necessary school supplies, and bringing the digital divide for these high schoolers.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"It's a part of our bigger project called the Education Upliftment Project: Together We Rise, which involves four government high schools here on the Southside of Belize City, Sadie Vernon High School, Excelsior High School, Maud Williams High School, and Gwen Lizarraga High School. So today we're here at Excelsior High School to deliver one of the components of that project, that project is a comprehensive approach to education, meaning that we provide free tuition to these students, we provide schools meals to these students at these institutions, we provide uniform, book supplies, we provide infrastructure upgrading to these institutions and one of the components is that we also supply these students with digital devices and we do so in partnership with other agencies, in this case we're working with the Ministry of Diaspora Relations, in particular an organization called Build Belize incorporated and they have gotten these devices, so we wanted to come here to Excelsior this morning to make sure that we send a very clear message to these young people, that they are important, that their education is important, that we believe in them, that we want to support them and we want to equip them with the tools they need to be successful students."
And since Excelsior High works with students from low income homes, the principal explained that these new devices will be a big improvement in the students' education.
Dawn Watters, Principal, Excelsior High School
"For us at Excelsior High School, we cater to students from poor socio economic backgrounds so for many of them, they don't have an electronic device so the donation today has really helped the students, it has helped them to be current with their schoolwork, it has helped them to conduct research and technology is being integrated into all areas of the curriculum so it allows linkages to happen across subject areas so it is really beneficial to our students here at Excelsior High School."
"For us, we were package based because our students didn't have access to technology, those who did have a phone, they didn't have money to purchase the data to do the schoolwork so we distributed packages throughout the whole two years."
Courtney Menzies:
"So this is a huge step forward."
Dawn Watters, Principal, Excelsior High School
"It is a huge step forward and we're very appreciative to the Ministry of Education who has facilitated it through the Diaspora Relations, we're very appreciative of this donation today."
And apart from those 54 students who got laptops today, Watters said that the Minister has promised to provide the other half of the school with upgraded devices in the future.
