On August 5, 2026, education leaders from every corner of Belize packed the Belize City Civic Center for the second and final day of the Ministry of Education’s National EdTech Summit, a landmark two-day gathering designed to reimagine how technology integrates into the country’s education system. Following a well-attended first day that drew hundreds of practicing teachers, the second day shifted focus to school administrators and principals, centering discussions on how institutional leadership can leverage emerging digital tools to strengthen collaboration across management teams, teaching staff, and student bodies.
Held under the provocative theme “Teaching Hacks,” the summit reclaims a term most often associated with cybersecurity breaches to reframe it as a creative, efficiency-focused approach to education reform. Organizers broke the concept into four core focus areas: reworking time management to cut down on administrative busywork, expanding imaginative problem-solving in lesson design, rethinking physical and virtual learning spaces, and updating rigid curricula to meet modern student needs.
Education Minister Francis Fonseca opened the day’s proceedings by emphasizing the summit’s core purpose: creating an open, collaborative space for the Ministry of Education to engage directly with educators, school leaders, and key education stakeholders to explore how technology and teaching can intersect to improve outcomes for all Belizean students.
The event comes amid a growing global and national conversation about the need for systematic innovation across all levels of education, not just in direct classroom instruction but also in institutional planning, administrative organization, and capacity building. Participants highlighted practical use cases for emerging tools like artificial intelligence that are already shifting how teachers work. Jeanne Link, Assistant Dean at Sacred Heart Junior College, shared on-the-ground insights into AI’s impact on her campus, noting that the technology has already streamlined time-consuming tasks for faculty. “With our faculty it has been wonderful, especially in doing calculations for like key assessment analysis, in order to review a lot of information very quickly,” Link explained. “So I’ve seen it enhancing the time effectiveness of our teacher’s work. They can easily have the AI edit their work so that saves a lot of time.”
Even as educators expressed enthusiasm for the potential of new technologies, summit speakers also centered the key barriers that still stand in the way of widespread, effective implementation. Ray Lawrence, Principal of Stann Creek Ecumenical College, pointed to the critical gap in targeted capacity building for current educators as Belize transitions to a new competency-based national curriculum. “We’re asking our current educators to deliver the national curriculum, which is a competency based curriculum now, but we have not trained them,” Lawrence noted. “And so a lot of training will be necessary because if the teachers themselves don’t know how to leverage technology then how can they teach the students how to leverage technology? So that’s one of the greatest challenges between ministry, management and teachers. The teachers have the desire to do it, but they require the capacity building and so the training is important.”
Organizers framed the summit as more than just a discussion forum: it marks the official launch of a new era of cross-stakeholder partnership between school management, teaching staff, and technology partners, all aimed at strengthening institutional cohesion and improving learning outcomes. When fully implemented, participants agreed that thoughtful technology integration will create a more accessible, effective curriculum and a more supportive working environment for educators, with ripple effects that extend from classrooms to students’ homes and Belize’s future workforce. Local outlet News Five sent reporter Devin Sabal to cover the event, who filed this report on the ground from the Belize City Civic Center.
