The Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) has committed to supporting the Mackenzie High School (MHS) aquaponics and hydroponics agricultural cultivation programmes.
According to a Department of Public Information (DPI) press release, this announcement was made by CARDI’s Guyana representative Dr. Cyril Roberts, during a CARDI Day exercise, in Linden last Thursday and is in recognition of the school’s record-breaking success at this year’s CSEC examinations in Agricultural Science.
This year, five students of the Mackenzie High School in Linden secured places on the Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC’s) CSEC’s Caribbean merit list for Agricultural Science. Gabrielle Williams, who placed third in the Caribbean, attained a Distinction in Agriculture Science and excelled in Mathematics, English and three other Science related subjects.
Four other students; Chelsea Tappin, Sheniah Layne, Tevin Hercules and Unique Bremner also achieved outstanding grades in Agriculture Science. These students were honoured by the CARDI Guyana representative. He congratulated the students and their teachers for their success and noted that the upcoming programme will assist the future batch of students particularly with the practical aspect of their School-Based Assessments (SBA), the DPI release added. “We will work with the school in developing the programme and we hope when we meet with the teachers, we will be able to fine-tune our efforts of collaboration for the students in preparing their SBAs for CSEC that they can actually benefit from the collaboration between the two institutions,” Dr Roberts was quoted as saying.
MHS Head Teacher, Haslyn Small, said that the school welcomes the programme as it will be of great benefit to the upcoming students as they complete their SBA’s since they will no longer have to venture off to other locations to have them completed. He also said that the programme will allow all the Agriculture students to see first-hand that there are soil-less alternatives to cultivation and how beneficial such techniques can be.
Commenting on the school’s record-breaking performance, Small said that he is extremely humbled and even though he was the Agricultural Science teacher for CSEC, he attributes the success to all the teachers who would have worked with the students since Agricultural Science has other subject areas such as Integrated Science, Accounts, Chemistry and Mathematics. His hope is that this would influence the upcoming batch of students to raise the bar even higher.
The DPI disclosed that CARDI will treat the students and their teachers to a tour of the Pomeroon River and a visit to a coconut farm and coconut water factory.
