Last year the Ministry of Education launched a Belizean Studies pilot project where first form teachers from about 11 schools countrywide taught the new subject. Well, the pilot has concluded and now the Ministry will evaluate the success of the trial run and officially incorporate it the high school curriculum countrywide. Here is more from today’s seminar at the Marion Jones Stadium.
John Newport - Ministry of Education Director of Quality Assurance Development Services
"The first form pilot we just completed probably a third of the time what you would traditionally think of as history, some of it was environmental studies, some of it was development, some of it was more human based looking at identity, particularly what does it mean to be Belizean and culture and so on so it is an integrated approach to try to understand who we are and the placing we live in."
Reporter
"Can you refresh our memory, which schools was this Belizean studies piloted in and what did you learn from that pilot study?"
John Newport
"It was actually 11 schools so I won’t name all of them, but it was two schools in each district and in some schools it was 4 and 5 teachers, some schools it was 1 teacher, I think , I forget exactly but it was several hundred students involved. One of the things we learned was we have to be careful not to be too ambitious, when you say Belizean studies are we going to study our country suddenly you are talking about a huge topic and the more we look at what does it mean to study Belize, the more we realize there is a lot to study and so we had to kinds focus on what the teachers and students were considering to be the most important central topics and then looking at spreading the content over the whole 4 years of high school so at the end of it students, they won’t know everything there is to know about Belize but they will know a lot."
Reporter
"So with that in mind what is happening here today and what is happening going forward?"
John Newport
"Okay so this is the transition from pilot which I said was a relatively small number of schools to a really nationwide roll out. The intention is that every high school student in first form, every single school in the country will be studying Belizean studies from August and then that will follow through first form, second form through to fourth form so most of the audience today are teachers and principals from those schools."
The Ministry of Education will provide the curriculum and will provide teacher training. So starting August all first form students will be taking Belizeans studies.
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