Above: Belmopan

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Belize will soon be the recipient of a $10 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank.

The latest loan approved by the IDB this week is designed to support Belize’s efforts to improve its primary education and the overall governance of its education system.

“The programme aims to prepare the teachers of today and tomorrow by supporting training institutes for new teachers and by training close to half of the country’s current primary education teachers,” the IDB said in a statement. “The programme will also train primary school principals and develop and implement an information system for education management, which will benefit all of the country’s primary and secondary schools.”

The IDB said it had been increasingly supporting efforts to improve education Belize, as one of four priority areas in the banks’ current strategy in the country.

The programme will directly support Belize’s 2011-2016 national education strategy, which seeks to alleviate high rates of grade repetition and overall low academic performance.