Foga Road High School Opened Yesterday

The Foga Road High School in Clarendon opened its doors yesterday(Sept. 10) with 260 students at the grade 7 level.
Foga Road High is one of two new schools opened by the Ministry of Education and Youth in keeping with its thrust to provide additional secondary spaces for students. The other school is Troy High School in Trelawny.
Situated on six hectares (15 acres) of land, the school, which was once an old factory building, has been refurbished and assigned eight classrooms as well as a computer laboratory and a library. Knox Community College occupies a part of the complex.
Principal of the School, Kerinth Campbell, told JIS News that the students, which are drawn from primary schools in May Pen after the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), were registered last Thursday during an orientation session held at the school. On that day, she said, students along with their parents were addressed by Ministry of Education officers, board members and Clement Radcliffe, Principal of Glenmuir High, who is overseeing the start-up of the school.
Miss Campbell informed that numeracy and literacy tests are being conducted to examine the competency of the students. The process, she explained, will assist the teachers in planning effective lessons “to match the students’ skill levels.”
According to Miss Campbell, 95 per cent of the staff has been employed and the remainder should be hired by the beginning of next week.
“We are about to interview for other areas such as guidance counsellors, reading specialist as well as a nurse, but hopefully, by the beginning of next week, we should have those persons in place,” she told JIS News, noting that arts and physical education teachers will also be employed.
Turning to the immediate needs of the school, Miss Campbell pointed to the shortage of furniture, especially for the school’s cafeteria, which will shortly be established.
Additionally, she informed, the playfield needs to be developed and equipment purchased for physical education. “As a new school, there isn’t anything that we would not need,” she said, and appealed to interested persons in the community to assist the school.
Despite the challenges, Miss Campbell told JIS News that she is ready to do all in her power “to make this school one of the best ones in the area.” Included in her plans, she said, is the introduction of a training programme to teach social graces, whereby students would be taught good manners, including how to behave while dining and at social and business events.
“It will be an on-going thing. Hopefully, my vision is that by the end of it, students will come out quite gracious and with the old time type of social etiquette which is lacking in some of our students,” the principal said.