Jamaica’s best-kept educational secret
SITUATED IN Spaldings, Clarendon, is one of Jamaica’s best-kept educational secrets – the small but spirited Knox Junior School. Knox Junior School was founded in 1947, and is a preparatory school operated by the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. We are guided by Christian principles.
Knox Junior School boasts a population of 439 students in our pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and grades one to six programmes.
Between the prekindergarten and the Kindergarten 3 departments, each class is equipped with a teacher and an assistant teacher with an average ratio of 22 to one. All classrooms within these departments boast their own bathroom facilities. At Knox Junior School, students enjoy a spacious and welcoming learning environment. The school grounds are well kept.
The broad-based curriculum offered at Knox Junior School is geared at equipping students for life. All students sit the Grade Six Achievement Tests at the end of the grade-six year. For the academic year 2017-2018 chess was introduced as a class to our four-, five- and six-year-olds.
In addition to the curriculumbased subjects, Knox Junior School offers a range of extracurricular activities to include karate, 4-H, chess, math, Spanish, dance, and music clubs. In the academic year 2016/2017, the school attained 100 per cent readiness in the Grade One Individual Learning Profile for all the students moving from our kindergarten programme to grade one. In the Grade Three Diagnostic Tests, we again attained 100 per cent mastery from our students. The Grade Four Literacy and Numeracy Tests yielded 100 per cent and 97 per cent mastery, respectively. At the grade six level, the students produced class averages ranging from 84 per cent to 89 per cent in four core areas.
Knox Junior School’s dominance does not go unnoticed in areas such as track and field, cheerleading and JCDC competitions. In 2016, we were placed seventh at the National Prep School Championships. In the same year, we were the Jamfit Cheerleading champions for the preparatory division. We have won numerous gold medals in the JCDC competitions at the parish level in music, dance, and speech. Our music programme is a very strong one as our choir has performed at many events.
In 2017, we were placed second in the Manchester leg of The Gleaner’s Children’s Own Spelling Bee Competition. We have placed no less than 11th in our eight years of competition, and actually won the Manchester championship in 2011. At the local level, we are the Manchester parish champions in the Howie Chin Preparatory Football Competition in both the boys’ and girls’ divisions.
Our fees are reasonably priced and we aim to give the very best service in all areas.