Closure of Alma Parris will not affect plans

The closing of the Alma Parris Memorial Secondary School will not affect the plans for the new secondary school in Christ Church.

Minister of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (METI), the Honourable Ronald Jones, made this comment as he spoke to the media following a meeting that was held at the METI headquarters yesterday evening.

Regrettably, the Minister confirmed that the school had officially closed its doors and commended the work of the teachers who tried their best to help the students that attended. Unfortunately, he confessed that the school was “closing itself” due to their diminishing intake of students recently.

“There are no children going into Alma Parris, so essentially, the school was closing itself because you can’t sustain a school with students only in third and fourth form; so the school was closing itself,” he said.

He believes that sometimes even the best-laid plans go awry due to some selfish ambitions or trying to exist with competing schools whose intake is different. He expressed that this in itself was nonsensical as it meant that you start to “vary from the path or agenda which was already established and that would obviously create problems in trying to create a curriculum that would suit the needs of the students.” He noted that the institution was an experiment and saluted the teachers once again for the work that they put into ensuring the students were looked after.

Jones went on to reveal that the plans for the new secondary school that was being built in Christ Church were now being developed and revealed that the creation of the school was to deal with the number of children in the island. At present, he noted that the average secondary school contained 1 000+ students and expressed that he believed secondary schools should have a roll of 900 students and this was including the presence of a sixth form, as this would give them a chance to efficiently educate students.