The Ministry Of Education has commissioned another advisory board - and again it's got 15 members. This one is called the Belize Board Of Teacher Education which will ensure that the people teaching your children have themselves been properly taught.

Education Minister Patrick Faber explained at yesterday's commissioning:�.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
"What is does basically is to ensure that the teacher education programs across the country have a certain standard, it's not being kept up to just anybody to say they are offering teacher training to our teachers. What the BBTE does is its looks at the curriculum that is being offered for instance in our junior college and the University of Belize to make sure that it is a common curriculum to make sure that it is what we want our teachers to be prepared with in order to deliver quality education to our students."

Jules Vasquez
"Are you all operating from the premise that something is wrong and it has to be fixed?"

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
"Well I would say that necessarily say that access has fallen off, we have had a problem with teacher training for donkeys' years now, there are some who believe that what was offered at the Belize Teacher's college is of an better quality than what is offered at the university of Belize and the junior colleges now but that may be filled with a little bit of nostalgia as well, people who wanted us to go back in centralized teacher training institutions as oppose to having all of these junior colleges across the country now offering teacher training. But if we have a problem with the quality, yes, it has always been the case and this effort with the BBTE is aim at ensuring that we have a better quality of instruction in these programs that we have across the country."

The BBTE was first commissioned in October 2006 but given the new legislation in the Education and Training Act of 2010, the structure and composition has been modified.

The newly appointed Chairperson is Mrs. Barbara Elrington.

Channel 7