Monday, March 1, 2010

BELIZE EDUCATION CRISIS CONTINUES!

THE EDUCATION CRISIS CONTINUES IN BELIZE

The crisis in education in Belize continues. The latest statistics reported by the Ministry of Education are that; 35% of children that go to basic elementary, primary, school, do not finish this level of education. No statistic was given for those children that receive no primary school education at all.
Another interesting statistic, is that 54% of children in the country do not get HIGH SCHOOL educations.
Belize is changing. Mainly agriculture, the number of jobs available for an unskilled uneducated work force is very limited.
The Government of Belize has few schools of it's own. Most schools are private and these are more like business opportunities of an entrepreneurial kind. The way it works, if any person buys land, builds a school and starts teaching to the CURRICULUM of the Education Department, after a 3 year observation period, said investment in the private school can get back 85% of the salaries needed to pay the teachers.
Most schools thus started, usually have about 45 to 50 students to start with, and then within a five year period find that they have 400 students to deal with and cannot do so in a logical and sane business manner. The student population of Belize is expected to continue to grow exponentially, over the next 30 years. This is due mainly to a favorable population to land ratio. This of course will eventually come to an end. Building schools, expanding schools, training teachers and making roads and streets and maintaining them along with the need to find money for building the many BRIDGES across rivers we need, is a never ending task for incoming governments of Belize.

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