C.E.O. Says Teacher Shortage is a Problem Across the Globe

Maheia explained that the ministry has made alterations to ensure that the certificates are processed as quickly as possible so that teachers can receive their licenses. Furthermore, in respect of the shortage of teachers created by teachers migrating or moving to other fields of work, there’s not much that the ministry can do. C.E.O. Maheia assured us that there are also newly trained teachers who will be looking for teaching jobs and can fill the posts.

 

Dian Maheia, Chief Executive Officer, Min. of Education

“What we’ve recognized is that and this has been over the past few months, we’ve recognized where there have been bottlenecks. Indeed, there have been challenges within the system and. Within the ministry itself, we have made adjustments. We have made changes in some of our offices. We have increased staff, um, some temporary personnel. We’ve, deployed people with different responsibilities to try to ensure that some processes recognizing that. There would be a really intense period now leading to the end of August and to the opening of school, um, because we would have over 2000 teachers who would need to renew licenses. We made some adjustments already. And so I think the recognition that there have been bottlenecks is accurate. We recognize that as well the union knows because we’ve sat in conversations and we’ve talked about it. We made commitments to adjust staffing and procedures and we’ve done those things so that we could it.  So we could process a little bit faster, and we could try to move, um, more efficiently.  So, yes, we’ve recognized, we’ve made adjustments and we’re continuing to process as quickly as possible. The truth is that there are there are vacancies right now. The data that we’ve collected shows that there are vacancies right now. Um, for example, with the secondary level, there’s vacancies for part-time as well as full-time positions, looking at both government and government aided. What we see is that from the point that was made earlier, there is, there is a very large vacancy for teachers of English. That’s where the biggest gap is right now. We recognize that. So that is a real situation right now in secondary schools. We’re trying to see how we can support the management with that. The primary school situation is that from the data that we have gathered as recently up to this morning, we’re gathering data is that while there are some vacancies in the primary school primary schools across the system, most of those, to be honest, are pending approvals from the ministry, which are expected to be coming within these days right here. We all know the reality that the Ministry of Education spends the lion’s share of its budget on paying teacher salaries. They – while we hear and appreciate every teacher who feels that he or she is underpaid, the reality is that this ministry is not in a position to say, oh, you know, we can do anything to make teachers’ salary is competitive right now compared to anybody else. When you look at teacher salaries that are being paid here compared to other countries, Belize’s teachers are not poorly, not so badly off. It’s not just happening here in Belize. It’s happening across the world. We have Belizean teachers in other Caribbean countries. With the way that CSME works, technically, we can have other teachers from other countries come here as well.”