Beginning in the upcoming school year, all students attending government secondary schools in Belize will effectively receive free education, Prime Minister John Briceño announced in his FY2026-27 budget address. The Education Upliftment Project — known as EUp: Together We Rise — expands from its 2022 launch at four schools with fewer than 1,000 students to 27 secondary schools serving more than 14,000 students. Combined with parallel coverage, the announcement places roughly 60 per cent of Belize’s secondary school population inside an effectively free public-secondary track.
The administration is also expanding the National Healthy Start Feeding Program, which is expected to reach approximately 20,000 primary and secondary students with an investment of about $10 million. Briceño told the House the programs are designed to “remove barriers to education and help ensure that Belizean children are healthy and ready to learn.” A new Belize Education Sector Plan 2026-2030 will frame the next phase of reform, including teacher recruitment, curriculum standards, and a digital learning push.
For Belizean diaspora families in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who routinely subsidise school fees for children of relatives back home, the policy shift is concrete and immediate. It changes the calculation on remittance allocation for households with secondary-age students and signals a policy direction — universal-access secondary as the floor — that has been politically contested across the region. The expansion also tightens a contrast with neighbours that continue to charge fees at the secondary level.
Sources: Love FM Belize, March 10, 2026; belize.com budget address coverage.