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And Minister Francis Fonseca expanded on their plans for the education sector, which includes keeping young men in schools and assisting young women with suitable employment.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"One of the issues we have is with young men, males, that's an issue we have with them staying in school, going to school in the first place but then when they're there, keeping them so they're going to be targeted programs for males, for young men, to make sure that they go into secondary school, they complete secondary school at a minimum and that they're kept there and that while they're there, they're equipped with skills that will allow them to participate meaningfully in the national development of Belize, participate in the labour market in an effective way. And then one of the challenges we have with young women, now as you know, a positive development has been that we have a lot more young women, a lot more females attending schools, going to school, going to tertiary education so we have a lot more educated women in our society. Absolutely important, this is a complete reversal of what used to take place 50 years ago when young women were discouraged from going to school, so it's a complete reversal and absolutely something we should applaud and support but what we find is that even though the young women are being better trained, better educated, they are not necessarily getting jobs in the job market that meet their training, their education, their skills. So that's another important part of this project, how do we make sure that we are improving workforce participation by women in our society."
