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This morning ground was broken on a community pre-school to be built in El Progresso village - which is in the Mountain Pine Ridge area of the Cayo District.  

The Construction of this school and 34 others are being funded in an 88 million dollar project by the Caribbean Development Bank and the Government of Belize.  This will be the first preschool for El progresso village and it's construction is thought to be essential for the educational foundation of the community's children. Â  Cherisse Halsall has more:

The children here at El Progreso Community Primary School in the Mountain Pine Ridge area might look like any other school kids. But infant one students here are repeating at a worrying rate, and that is because there is a problem: literacy. 

And in an effort to combat illiteracy the community primary school today broke ground on a Pre-school that will open in April of 2020. Minister Of Education Patrick Faber made the journey to El Progreso and stressed the importance of a strong educational foundation. 

Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"That trouble exists primarily because the children in this school here are not getting a strong start because they don't start at that very early stage of their lives 3 and 4 years old our children deserve the opportunity from that early stage to be learning and so this initiative of building a preschool here and you hear Dr. Denny say 35 new schools well 22 of them are pre-schools or pre-primary schools as we are calling them. And we make no apologies for that the struggles that we're having in later primary school, and also in secondary school, and if you talk to the tertiary level people they will tell you even in tertiary is because our children don't start with a strong foundation."

The new pre-school will form an integral part of the Progresso community and its construction means a lot to the people here, especially because a member of the community donated land for it. It wasn't a government parcel; it wasn't privately purchased; it was donated by a villager who wants to see the younger children get ahead 

Dr. Ydahlia Metzgen - Land Donor 
"My field is not education its economics but through looking at economic development I've done a lot of research and looked at studies and unambiguously across countries race, gender, cultures pre-primary education has the biggest impact on the future of children not only in terms of their general well-being but in terms of their earning capacity through their lifetime so if you can introduce education at a very early age, preschool, your basically putting children on a very excellent path for their future and their families as well because studies also show that their entire family benefits, and particularly educating girls that girls tend to invest more in their children and their communities than boys. That's not a political statement it's a statistical fact so for every dollar you spend on a girl that dollar is more likely to have spill over effects to the broader community and to the family."

16% of Infant 1 students have to repeat that compares to 1% in the rest of the region and so that's a startling difference in Belize it means that relative to the other countries in the region our children are not performing their having to repeat and repeating then not only does it have additional costs to the community it also has a cost personally to the child.

And Principal Brian Watson says that even with the construction of a community pre-school, parents play the most integral role in early childhood education.

Brian Watson - Principal 
"Most students have the opportunity to come to school having parents that read to them at home and talk to them and sometimes some villages have situations where students come to school where they don't have a lot of reading at home or they don't have a lot of meaningful conversations with parents and these things can affect students learning and being ready to learn as well when they come to school. Repetition unfortunately it's a part of a lot of our society and if we can curb what's happening at the lower levels and work on better preparing children when they get in it could do a lot to be able to not have that problem with repetition when they get older."

But He says that while Minister Faber's visit was very important for Optics. Politicians can definitely do more for education in Belize.

Brian Watson            
"I would like to see our officials be a little bit more involved in the education process not just when a building is being built but really try to increase what's happening in the pre-primary schools and primary schools and high schools by having more teachers, by building better schools, by in a school like ours having a non-teaching principal so that we can get to the different classrooms. So his visit was very important today certainly for the optics of the pre-school but I'd also like to see all of our representatives that we elect to take a more active part in our educational system, a more meaningful part."

The school is slated for completion in April of next year.  It will hold 20 students and also accommodate 20 persons for night classes.  

After this event, there were groundbreakings for schools in Esperanza and Billy White.