The construction of the $1 billion Westminster Secondary School located in La Parfait Harmonie, Region Three, has finally been completed.
The Ministry of Education in a release yesterday said that the state-of-the-art facility will be ready for the new school year starting in September and according to Minister of Education Priya Manickchand, who visited the site yesterday, “This one is ready for it to be handed over to us. It is a beautiful school. It is probably going to be one of our most resourced schools given the labs we have seen and we want to make sure that the children of Region Three can benefit from it”.
Manickchand noted that the school was one of six that were conceived of in 2013 in pursuit of the Ministry of Education’s goal to achieve Universal Secondary Education in Guyana. The six, she said, were eventually reduced to three – Westminster Secondary, Good Hope Secondary, and Prospect Secondary schools. She referred to the fact that the schools were not completed over the last five years as “unfortunate” but assured that government is “insistent on completing each school for those children that stand to benefit.”
The Education Minister disclosed 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 that have no secondary school to attend.
She described such a situation as 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.”
The minister gave an update on the progress of the Good Hope Secondary School and admitted that the construction process continues to present challenges. She however expressed the hope that it can also be ready for September to serve the students of Region Four. The completion of the Good Hope Secondary School will allow the ministry to close all Primary Tops on the East Coast of Demerara.
Manickchand was accompanied on the site visit by Chief Education Officer, Dr Marcel Hutson; Regional Education Officer, Devindra Persaud; Coordinator of the Guyana Secondary Education Improvement Project (GSEIP), Jimmy Bhojedat; and Special Projects Offi-cer, Ron Eastman.
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.
The total cost of the school is approximately $1 billion and was funded by the World Bank through the GSEIP. All of the furniture and necessary equipment have already been bought and will be installed as soon as the building is handed over to the Ministry.
The Westminster Secondary School boasts 32 classrooms, a language lab, dance studio, library, Physics, Chemistry and Biology laboratories, an Information Technology laboratory, a theatre room, a Mathematics laboratory, a Home Economics laboratory and an Agriculture Science laboratory among other facilities.
It will accommodate 1,000 students and is to be categorised as a Grade ‘A’ school, but for now, it will be
a List ‘B’ school but that status will change over the next two years the Minister noted. She added that the Ministry intends to make the school a Sixth Form school so as to offer the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).
On assuming office in August 2020, Manickchand had stressed Government’s zero tolerance for delayed works and had warned contractors to ensure that work is done within the contractual time. The Ministry, she said, had worked closely with R Bassoo and Sons Construction Inc and the consulting firm Deen and Partners/SRKN Engineering to ensure the school is completed.
