Francis Fonseca, “Quality of teachers directly linked to quality of education.”  

Earlier today, Minister of Education Francis Fonseca spoke about the relationship between the Government of Belize and the Belize National Teachers Union, in the wake of recent comments made by Prime Minister John Briceño.  While he reiterated that both parties share an amicable working relationship, he also emphasized that the quality of education that students receive is contingent upon the quality of their educators.

 

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education

“We have a good working relationship with the Belize National Teachers Union.  It’s been a respectful relationship and we speak openly and frankly, so that’s nothing new.  We have talked openly about the need and the BNTU accepts that there is a need for improved teacher education.  We need to improve the quality of teacher training and we need to ensure that we are equipping our teachers with more skills.  As you all know, we’ve implemented a new curriculum, a competency-based curriculum.  That new curriculum requires that our teachers develop news skills.  So that’s an ongoing effort, it’s an ongoing effort and whatever the government has said about it, it’s not to be critical.  It’s not to disrespect teachers, it’s not to be critical of teachers, it’s to say to them that we need to work together to ensure that teacher training is improved.  All of us have a collective responsibility to ensure that because the quality of our teachers is directly linked to the quality of education.”