Lounge

I just came back from two weeks in Belize. Mostly pleasure. But some business too.
I spoke with the headmaster of a four room k-8 school deep in the rainforest,
180 miles from the coast. In Belize, students who want to finish high school have
to travel to a boarding school. Because--for the most part--there are no local high schools.

That headmaster wants to expand his constituency to adult education. Few Belizeians
finish high school. And many now wish they had. But they want an accredited diploma
of some sort. They aren't interested in education for its own sake. They want better
jobs. Employers want certified credentials of some sort. And that's a problem. Because
well-regarded programs with good curricula and teachers who interact with the
students can cost as much as $2000 per student per year. And the Belizeians who
need better education don't have that kind of money.

The obvious answer to me would be to separate credentials from curricula.
If you could somehow learn enough to pass an equivalency test, that would be better
than nothing. Paid test takers (cheating) would undoubtedly be a problem. But
government run testing centers that include passport like photos, taken at test time
and attached to the diploma somehow, could overcome those problems.

This is something I know little about. I did a little Googling around with keywords
GED and high school equivalency, and found mostly sights the promise to deliver
a diploma in 5 days or less. How do I find out what legitimate Online Testing
already already exists? Or doesn't it exist?

...English is the official first language in Belize. But for most citizens, Creole is
their first spoken language. And so many Guatemalans live there now most of them
speak a lot more Spanish than I do. A few (mostly dark-skinned fishermen from the
South) even speak a fourth language: Garafuna. Unlike Creole, which is a mixture
African and European languages, Garafuna is a mixture of various African languages
and Carib Indian. This is a poorly educated but sharp, ambitious, bright-eyed and
highly intelligent population that needs distance learning now.