Glendevon Primary & Junior High: TOP SCHOOL IN ITS CLASS

TEACHERS AT Glendevon Primary and Junior High in Montego Bay, St James, were elated on the day the results of the Grade Four Literacy and Numeracy tests for 2016 were published in the daily newspapers.

“Our school stands tall. We are the top primary and junior high school in the region,” oozed principal Susan Simms.

The school, which is in a sometimes volatile community in St James, was ranked 10th out of 46 public and private schools in the region, which includes Hanover and Westmoreland. The school attained approximately 62 per cent mastery of numeracy and 85 per cent mastery of literacy in the grade four tests. These recent test results are indicators that the school has been improving on its weak areas, which the National Education Inspectorate (NEI) found during its assessment in 2013. LITERACY MASTERY BELOW AVERAGE

The chief inspector reported then that overall student performance in national tests was unsatisfactory, although the school was rated overall as satisfactory, which is the minimum level of effectiveness expected.

At that time, the school’s grade four mastery of literacy was below the national and regional level for 2010 and 2011, and was one percentage point above the regional mastery in 2012.

The chief inspector found then that the school’s Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) language arts average “was consistently below the national average”. Furthermore, the school’s communication tasks average of 72 per cent in 2012 was below the national average, too. Fast-forward to 2017. This year’s GSAT results showed an improvement in the averages for social studies, language arts, and communication tasks over last year. Language arts accounted for the highest score of 99 per cent, while four students scored 11 out of 12 on the communication task examination.

The results revealed that student Alex Vernon, the deputy head boy, received 90s for all subject areas. He is the recipient of a Scotia Foundation Shining Star Scholarship to attend Cornwall College.

This is the second scholarship from Scotia Foundation, as the head boy of 2014, Tyris Griffiths, was also awarded a scholarship to Herbert Morrison Technical High School. The present head boy, Claude Blackwood, is also the recipient of a scholarship from the Jamaica Ambassador Programme and will be attending Cornwall College.

“We have been going up and down in our subject areas over the past four years, but on average, we have been seeing a steady increase,” Simms tells The Gleaner.