More than 1,200 educators and school leaders from across the country gathered over the past two days for Belize's largest educational brainstorming event: the 2nd National Ed-Tech Summit. Jomarie Lanza was there and here's her report.
The two-day event finished today.
Education Minister Outlines Proposed Teacher Licensing Regime
And while these teachers spent the last 2 days learning cool teaching techniques, many are concerned about the new Education Bill that will impact the status of their teaching license. We asked Education Minister Fonseca about this and he explained what this new licensing regime entails.
Reporter:
"In relation to the bills that have been presented in terms of education is it that this aspect of general licenses will it be more specialized requiring teachers only to have license for a specific area and if that is the case how will teachers stand to be affected?"
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"No on the contrary what we are doing is expanding the pool and really building in flexibility into the teacher licensing regime one of the issues we have been discussing with the BNTU and with our school management over the past few years is how we can make that regime more flexible. As you know one of the challenges Belize faces like every other developing country is keeping our teachers, keeping our teachers at home."
"And so one of the key features of this licensing regime is that a teacher who does not necessarily have a degree per se you don't have a degree in math or a degree in science or a degree in a particular subject could still get a license to teach a particular subject if they demonstrate certain capacity and if they meet particular criteria that the ministry."
Marisol Amaya:
"So it won't be helter skelter? So a math teacher will go and teach English?"
Francis Fonseca:
"No no, again specific criteria in place but we want to build in flexibility into the, it is too rigid now it is too rigid where we have a lot of teachers who have skills in particular areas bur can't teach because they don't have all the required academic qualifications so we want to make it more flexible to allow for that to happen."
Garifuna Collective Wraps Up 20th Anniversary European Tour in Berlin
And we close tonight with video from the closing date of the Garifuna Collective's recent 14-day European tour marking the band's 20th anniversary. They played their last show in Berlin at the Miriam Makeba Auditorium and we have fan videos courtesy of Dominique Norales who attended. Enjoy and join me back here tomorrow night.
