Luis de Shong was assigned preparatory work for the establishment of WSGSS

The West St George Secondary School came into being two decades ago as the current administration rolled out its “Education Revolution”. Senior Education Officer with responsibility for Secondary Schools, Luis de Shong, was the person charged by the Ministry of Education with the responsibility for making all the necessary preparations to ensure that a Secondary School was established in the Constituency of West St George.

“It all came in light of the Government’s new policy to usher in universal access to secondary education”, de Shong explained. West St George Secondary School (WSGS), then was where this policy was piloted. The ministry was then headed by Laura Browne as Permanent Secretary, with Susan Dougan, now Dame Susan Dougan, Governor General, as Chief Education Officer and veteran educator, Mike Browne as Minister of Education. de Shong’s work was submitted as recommendations to the leadership of the Ministry of Education. In addition to getting the support from the other arms of the ministry for the physical matters- the building, the furniture, the equipment , de Shong’s task also involved identifying relevant staff and making recommendations for the curriculum , “because we realized that with universal access to secondary education we were opening the doors for everybody and quite rightly, we knew that there would have been a few challenges with respect to the levels that students would come into the school, and one of them was the reading issue”.

The need to identify appropriate teachers who could help the children to develop their reading abilities, was of seminal importance. The ministry recognized that as long as the students were taught to read, they would be able to read to learn.

Therefore, it also required that the teachers be persons who were  caring, understanding, and also possessed the patience to work with the students to guide them and help them to grow and develop. Then there were meetings with the parents of the first cohort of students to obtain their involvement in the decisions that had to be made. While these parents were anxious, de Shong recalls they were also happy their children were going to be granted an opportunity to enter secondary school. The person identified to be the first Principal was Alinda Hypolite, who also was involved in the meetings with parents. The School was housed in the Senior Division of the Belair Primary School, and opened on September, 5, 2004, with 105 students, the Principal, and a six-member teaching staff, along with a secretary and an assistant secretary. The teaching staff was Andrew Bramble (geography and physical education); Innis Primus ( English); Anthony Spann ( Mathematics); Kenlyn Hamilton ( Spanish and current affairs); Kadeisha Plaugh ( history and English); and Ken Cato ( Integrated Science and Health and Family life Education). Kathleen Edwards was the secretary, and Niasha Adams from the YES programme, was Adams’ assistant. The student population, drawn from the school’s immediate environs and a few other areas including Sion Hill and Kingstown, comprised children who had not gained the required passing grade when they wrote the then Common Entrance examination. Much remedial work was therefore required by the teaching staff, to build literacy and numeracy skills, and because of these deficits, many students exhibited varying levels of frustration requiring staff to dig deep to provide guidance and support to help these students on a path towards their personal growth and development. After a period of five to six years, the school was able to enter some of their students to write the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) who returned passing grades in five and six subjects. The growing student body moved into current school plant in 2011. Students from the West St George Secondary School can be found in a variety of employment areas, including as operators of their own businesses.

They are “now are making their own contributions to the development of this society in much the same way as the very ones who entered what you would call the regular secondary schools,” de Shong remarked.

“There are the plusses for universal secondary education, and looking back there was a lot of good in it; there is a lot of good in it as long as you have the mindset and the demeanour, as long as you have the teachers who are going to be willing to take the time to plan their lessons, to tailor their lessons appropriately, and to guide the students in a way that would help them to be interested in the whole business of learning and growing and developing, these students will make very good use of the opportunity.”