State-of-the-art Westminster Secondary School completed

…no more Primary Tops for Region 3

The Westminster Secondary School has been completed and will be ready for the new school year starting September 2021.
This was announced by Education Minister Priya Manickchand, who on Thursday visited the state-of-the-art facility at La Parfaite Harmonie, Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara).
According to Manickchand, the school is one of six schools that were conceived in 2013, because at that time the Education Ministry wanted to achieve universal secondary education in Guyana.

She said that that number was reduced to three – Westminster Secondary School, Good Hope Secondary School and Prospect Secondary School.
The Education Minister said that it was unfortunate that the schools were not completed over the last five years, adding that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government was insistent on completing each school for those children who stand to benefit.

Primary Tops
She added that the school, together with a dormitory to be built at Leonora, will allow the Ministry to close all Primary Tops in Region Three. A Primary Top is a department within a primary school that caters for children of secondary school age who have no formal secondary school to attend. These students would continue to attend primary school but receive a secondary education.
This situation, she added, is undesirable and not likely to produce the results for which the Ministry is aiming. “It’s not likely to give students the opportunities they need to survive best in this world. So that’s why we conceived of these schools in the first place. I am extremely excited to be able to do that in Region Three,” Manickchand noted.

Giving an update on the Good Hope Secondary School, the Minister said that the construction process continued to present challenges, but she was hopeful that the school could also be ready for September to serve the students of Region Four. She said that the completion of the Good Hope Secondary School would allow the ministry to close all Primary Tops on the East Coast of Demerara.
Chief Education Officer, Dr Marcel Hutson, along with other education and regional officials together with the contractor and consultant, accompanied the Minister on Thursday’s visit.
The contract to build the Westminster Secondary School was awarded to R Bassoo and Sons. Construction began in October 2018 and was scheduled to be completed in January 2020.
On assuming office in August 2020, the Education Minister had stressed Government’s zero tolerance for delayed works and warned contractors to ensure that work was done within the contractual time. She said that the Ministry had worked closely with contractor and the consulting firm to ensure the school was completed.
The total cost of the school is approximately $1 billion and was funded by the World Bank through the Guyana Secondary Education Improvement Project (GSEIP).
The Westminster Secondary School has 32 classrooms; a language lab; dance studio; library; Physics, Chemistry and Biology laboratories; an Information Technology Laboratory; a theatre room; a Mathematics laboratory; Home Economics laboratory and an Agriculture Science Laboratory among other facilities built to provide the best education to the nation’s children.
It will accommodate 1000 students and will, therefore, be a Grade A school. For now, it will be categorised as a List B school which speaks to quality, but that status will change over the next two years according to the Minister. She added that the Ministry intended to make the school a Sixth Form school to offer the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).