Between 2014 and 2020 the Education Quality Program (BL-L1018) focused on teacher training, creating a quality assurance system to improve education policy, and evaluated the effect of teacher training on improving education quality. The project was targeted to solve two main issues in the country: the low quality of instruction, particularly in primary education, and the lack of governance mechanisms to monitor the quality and equity levels of education throughout the system.

By the end of the program, half of the primary schools in Belize had benefited from the training provided, with 320 principals, and more than 1,500 teachers participating. The proportion of in-service primary education teachers with an overall grade of B or higher in the training exam increased from 69 percent to nearly 80 percent. More than 30,000 students benefited from improvements to the learning model and student scores improved by .16 standard deviations in mathematics and .29 standard deviations in science. An Education Management Information System was also launched to collect information from all primary and secondary schools and guide decision-making. Due to its successful results, a second phase of the program was approved in 2020 (BL-L1030) to expand the project’s inquiry and problem-based pedagogical approach nationwide. For more information, see the project’s PCR.