On Friday, thousands of Belizeans learned the sad story of the 11 year old who was sent home from school on Children's Day. His picture and sad story spread across facebook in the span of minutes via a post made by an unknown person living in San Roman Village, who claims she came across the child wandering around in his school uniform after he claimed that the school turned him away for not being able to chin up $4.50 towards the school's children's day festivities.
The ministry of education sprang into action and launched an investigation to find out what really happened. They later confirmed that the child was never turned away from school for not being able to pay.
Today when we met the minister of state in the ministry of education he told us that whatever the case may be no child should be turned away from school regardless of their financial circumstances.
Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State Ministry of Education
"It was shocking to us. We had to say you know something had to be wrong here. It could not be that the school was turning back a child for this purpose so in fact when we went and found out, we found out that it was not that then there was a relief right so no children have a right to be in school and school of course will do what they try to do to make life better for the children on campus with these activities. That is all fine but we cannot turn away. Any child for that kind of activity."
"I want to make it very clear as a senior minister, Minister Fonseca has made it very clear that child can be turned back from school it is very simple that there is no complication about that we have in our laws that children have a right to their education so while we understand that schools will try to raise funds, etc., and I'm sure that the majority of schools and the principals understand that they know there are children in the schools who cannot afford to make that contribution, and so children cannot be turned back for that purpose, in this case, we found out in fact that that is not what transpired so we have confidence in the management at these schools that they can make the right decisions and if they ever do make mistakes in that regard, those things will be pointed out. Children have a right to be in the classrooms."
Reports suggest that the child may have in fact been the victim of bullying.
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