Catering to a diverse group of students

WOLMER’S CAN boast of being the secondoldest school in the Caribbean, having been founded on May 21, 1729, the same day John Wolmer made his last will and testament, leaving the bulk of his estate for the foundation of a free school in the parish of his death. The sum of the legacy was £2,360.

In 1941, at the instigation of Miss Skempton, the headmistress of Wolmer’s Girls, the preparatory school was established to ‘feed’ the girls’ school. It began with six girls in the area that now houses the canteen and art room.

Over the years, the Wolmer’s Schools have had many benefactors who have helped to ensure that the schools, which, at the start of the new millennium, comprise some 3,000 students and 150 faculty members, have fulfilled the hope expressed in the law of 1736, i.e. that Wolmer’s would become “a very considerable and beneficial seminary of learning for youth”.

Wolmer’s Preparatory School educates a diverse group of students with a range of strengths, interests, and learning differences. The programmes are personalised and student centred. Located at 10 Connolley Avenue, Kingston 4, the school is in proximity of both high schools.

The Wolmer’s School was originally situated in downtown Kingston at what is still known as the Wolmer’s Yard, now a parking lot and vendors’ arcade beside the Kingston Parish Church. In 1896, the schools were separated and independent heads appointed for the Boys’ and Girls’ schools. After the 1907 earthquake, when most of the school buildings were destroyed, the schools were relocated to its present site, north of Race Course or what is now the National Heroes Park.

Our thoughts each Founder’s Day go back to John Wolmer. A marble memorial in the Kingston Parish Church shows a seated figure of liberty holding a medallion of the crest of the school and the sun of learning breaking through the clouds of Ignorance.