7 News Belize

PUP's Education Solution
posted (August 12, 2020)
In the first two segments of tonight's news, you've heard abundantly about the current coronavirus outbreak - with 220 active cases.

And while COVID concerns abound with no signs of relief any time soon, this is still an election year, and general elections are about 100 days away.

And that's why showing more confidence for the future than COVID would seem to permit, this morning, the PUP held a grand launch for its proposed reform agenda for the education system.

7News had a front-row seat, and Daniel Ortiz reports:

The People's United Party calls it their Plan Belize, which appears to be a manifesto rollout for the 2020 election cycle. They have several key areas of governance that they want to address, and today, the big topic was education.

Henry Charles Usher - Chairman, PUP
"The Party Leader and the excellent cadre of persons he assembled are ready to roll out Plan Belize, a people-centered plan that will build a Belize that works for everyone."

From the Opposition Party's perspective, the quality and performance Belize's education system has regressed significantly under the stewardship of Minister Patrick Faber and the Barrow Government.

Hon. Francis Fonseca - Former PUP Education Minister
"Government oversees the delivery of education by almost 5,700 teachers in approximately 630 educational institutions to some 102,000 students. Over 268 million dollars was spent on education in 2018, amounting to 26.7% of the Government's total recurrent expenditure. Yet, despite this relatively high overall ratio of expenditures, the Government has presided over a striking deterioration in access to and quality of education provided at all levels in Belize, over the past decade."

"Since 2014, the pre-school net enrollment fell from 42.7% to 37.7% in 2018. Since 2012, while the student population eligible for primary school education has increased by 17%, the net enrollment rate for primary schools across Belize has fallen every single year from 95.3% in 2012 to 79.2% in 2018, it's the lowest point in almost a decade. Similarly, since 2012, the student population eligible for secondary school education has also increased by 17%, the net enrollment rate for secondary school has remained flat over the same period, at 50.4% in 2012, increasing to 53% in 2016, but falling back to 50.1% in 2018, it's the lowest point in almost a decade. Simply put, our children are not going to school."

"The Ministry of Education has been wasting money, focusing on the wrong objectives and the wrong outcomes."

So as the PUP sees it, its Plan Belize for Education is about course correction.

Hon. Francis Fonseca - Former PUP Education Minister
"There are clearly many problems that exist within our education system. The answer cannot be to just thoughtlessly throw more money at the problems, but rather, to take a strategic and smarter approach to the delivery of education in Belize."

"Free education from pre-school to 6th Form. Universal Pre-school education, the establishment of a Teacher and Learning Institute, 100% trained teachers, 4 to 4th laptop Computer Program, Fair Access 5-million dollar higher education loan fund, Equal Opportunity 3 million Rural Education Grant Fund, the National Healthy Start Feeding Program, Free textbook/E-book program expansion to high school, the expansion of the African and Maya History program, Civics education at all levels of our education system. Appropriate incentive mechanisms will be introduced with a view to increasing teacher attendance pedagogical training. These incentives will be linked to learning outcomes particularly in the areas of literacy, math, science, engineering, and technology."

Hon. John Briceno "I am laser-focused on the Healthy Start Feeding program, laser-focused on the Education Loan Fund, the Teacher and Learning Institute, Rural Education Grant, the harnessing of technology for our benefit, and laser-focused on making sure that our students are at the center of learning."

"Together, we have to decide if we are going to be a country where only 5% of our children will reach their potential, and do spectacularly well, while others will struggle to get by, or whether we will do right by the next generation."

If you're wondering how the PUP - if they form the next Government - will afford these education reforms, they say they have that figured out as well.

Hon. Francis Fonseca - Former PUP Education Minister
"A People's United Party administration will be student-centered and focus on student learning outcomes, not on administrative control or teacher licenses. The administration of Education must be more efficient. Our goal is to reduce administrative costs and expenses from its current 12% of the education budget, to 5%. This will yield savings of some 20 million dollars annually. Next, while we have 5,700 teachers, we almost 1,200 non-teachers employed at the Ministry of Education. At present, this means that 17% of the education workforce are not educators. We need less bureaucracy, and our goal is to reduce the non-educator workforce to 10% of the total education workforce, which will yield annual savings of 20 million dollars. The People's United Party Government's overall efforts to curb corruption and grow the economy at an annual rate of not less than 4% will lead to further savings, and recurrent tax revenues, from which we will allocate an additional 60 million dollars to education, with an available 100-million-dollar annually from savings and revenue, the People's United Party will be able to fully finance its plan of action for 2020 to 2025 in education."

But, at this time, this education reform plan is simply a manifesto promise by a political party that is hoping to get your vote. And so, they have to get the buy-in of the Belizean voters, who are well-accustomed to the ways of politicians seeking office.

Reporter
"How would you respond to the cynical voter who says, this again is just political rhetoric?"

Hon. John Briceno
"We know there's the cynicism with the voter today, and rightly so, especially after they've seen 13 years of a UDP Government that their sole interest was to stay in Government, and not really transforming people's lives, and making things better for them. But, I don't think that should stop us from coming up with plans that can truly make people's lives better. These are not things that we took from the sky, or just sat in a room one morning, and then Francis as the former Minister of Education wrote it down. This thing was months of consultations."

We apologise for that sudden break in transmission due to a technical error. We now pick up our story on the PUP's plan for education as they go into the next election:

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