Teaching never stops
Clarke details Mount Pleasant Academy’s round-the-clock syllabus
Mount Pleasant Football Academy principal Vanny Clarke revealed that the school is run from Sunday to Sunday and that they have classes every day of the week, even on the day of worship.
“Our week starts Sunday and ends Saturday, as we go through the weekend. Most people think of school as Monday to Friday, but we operate Sunday to Saturday. So it is Sunday to Saturday for us,” he told STAR Sports.
While regular academic classes are the main focus during the week, on weekends, more unconventional, but football-oriented subjects are practised.
“Tomorrow (Saturday), we have academic sessions, football sessions and recreation activity. On Sunday, they (students) will have a 90-minute academic session, then go to church and then do some recreational activities. Then, they will play an opening game before the RSPL match. But the curriculum goes right through the week. We start at 5:30 in the morning and end at 8 p.m.,” Clarke explained.
“We have maths, sports science, IT (information technology), industrial technology, and basic food preparation, so classes are going on. We have not introduced the football curriculum to them in any meaningful way as yet, but classes are going very well. The sport development classes, which encompass the business of sports and sports management, will help them appreciate the level of professionalism required to make it at the international level,” he said.
Although the academy only consists of grade seven and nine classes, Clarke explained that next year, they would introduce the grade eight and 10 cohorts, with the present set of students to move into those new grades.
“We will go right through to grade 13. We now have seven and nine only. Next year, grade seven would move to grade eight, and year three (grade nine) will move to grade four cohorts,” he said.