Ministry of Education Implements Competency-Based Learning Strategy

The Ministry of Education is making a shift in the learning curriculum. Today, at Belize House of Culture a consultation was strategized with Dr. Loius Zabaneh, BNTU President, and GEMS schools which are Gwen Liz, Excelsior, Maud Williams, and Sadie Vernon. This new strategy is “Competency-Based Learning.” Dr. Loius Zabaneh, Minister of Education, Culture, Science, and Technology explained how this change can help students receive a more practical way of learning and how the ministry plans on making new changes to the yearly training teachers receive. 

Dr.Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Culture: “It’s always invigorating for us because we ask our principals and our teachers to tell us exactly what they’re experiencing because without that we wouldn’t be able to really make the right interventions. In a nutshell what they’ve shared with us is that unlike many of the other schools they have some other issues that need to be addressed before we can embark on fully moving forward with the curriculum framework. And these include for example that many of the students that they have are at low level of reading competency, literacy, numeracy that’s a big issue for them so we have to have those interventions first to make sure that those things are addressed and then they can move into the other areas for the competency based education plan. Traditionally in August that’s when teachers receive CPDs right, so you have Continuing Professional Development courses that are offered by the Ministry and other education entities. This year we’re focusing on three areas all those topics related to competency based education, our framework implementation that’s one grouping and then we have the important issue of special education. We also have the third area the wellbeing of teachers.”

Love News spoke to Dawn Watters, principal of Excelsior High School, where she highlighted the positive outcomes seen so far. 

This new strategy plans to expose youths to a more hands-on way of learning and how life outside of school functions.