Parents accept offer to have daughters admitted to GHS

All of the parents of the girls who were “unfairly” denied places at the Girls’ High School have accepted the offer for their daughters to be admitted to the institution.

Chief education officer Lou-anne Gilchrist told SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday that all of the parents{{more}} were contacted and offered a place.

“All accepted, but some of them decided to defer the change of registration to 2016 into Form 2,” Gilchrist said.

Last week, SEARCHLIGHT reported that two students, ranked 149th and 159th were accepted into the school ahead of potentially 44 others who placed between 121st and 159th in the 2015 Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment (CPEA) exam.

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, in a letter dated August 17, 2015 to the chief education officer had ordered that all the girls falling between 121st and 159th be offered places.

“[The] fundamental principle of equity, fairness, and merit has clearly been violated in the assignment of places at the GHS to two students….The Ministry of Education has an obligation to put right what is clearly wrong.”

SEARCHLIGHT, however, understands that although only the girls who placed in the first 120 were assigned to the all girls school by the Ministry of Education, the school had also offered places to the seven girls who placed between 121st and 124th along with the two ranked 149th and 159th.

It therefore appears that 33, not 44, girls were “unfairly” denied places.

According to a usually reliable source, parents of 17 of the girls showed up at the school last Monday in response to a public service announcement, while five others had gone to the 104-year-old school last Friday, the same day the story appeared in SEARCHLIGHT.

In his letter to Gilchrist, the Prime Minister had said if the students were interested in being placed at the GHS and had already bought books and uniforms for other schools, the Government had an obligation to pay for those items.

Last Monday’s meeting with the parents was chaired by the chief education officer and attended by acting headmistress of the GHS Michelle Beache, principal of the Thomas Saunders Secondary School John Renton and principal of the Emmanuel High School Mesopotamia Curtis Greaves.