And as the ones on the ground, the teachers see what the issues really are and are willing to give the government some tips. They say that at the top of the list is the severe lack of resources in classrooms.
Bay Rivas, National Secretary, BNTU
"I can go out and I can hire one of the brightest minds, the most educated, they could have been educated at Columbia Education Department, right? University. But when I come, when I put that person in the classroom and I do not give that person the necessary tools to do his or her job, then what can you expect? right?
"It's just like if I come and I get the best doctors in the world and no catscan, right? Just a little rusty knife in there where they have to do their work. So what can you expect? So definitely when it comes to allocation of resources, especially with the competency based curriculum, with the competency based curriculum, a lot of the work is project based."
"And a lot of these project-based work just put an additional burden upon households and in Belize, we're already dealing with issues of poverty. So you are already poor, you're already allocating so much of your household finances towards education and on top of that, I have to go and find money to do three, five projects a month. You understand? So we definitely need, and especially with all of this money that I'm hearing from the Millennium Challenge Cooperation, I hope that that money will find its way into the classroom because as our sister has said, all this money is floating around, but it just goes to consultants and big ministry this and, and, and, you know, it, so it's not getting the job done. Right? So these are kind of systemic changes. What the World Bank indicated, there is a lack of proper accountability. We as teachers cannot hold our own schools accountable for the spending of the money."
"That is the job of the ministry. They're saying that there was only the PSE and even PSE is gone. We did not do away with PSE. They're saying that even the PSE, because it was at the end of primary school, you could not have used it as a part of diagnostic testing."
"That is the job of the Ministry of Education. They also recommended that we form part of international assessment bodies that would help to put our education or at least measure us internationally. So it's not subject by school."
"Again, that's not a decision that teachers can sit down and say, well, we will join PISA. That is something that these Ministry officials have to make."
