Principal reports on an academic year of ‘mixed fortunes’ at Lester Vaughan

The 2016 – 2017 Academic Year has been described as one of “mixed fortunes”, by Acting Principal of the Lester Vaughan School, Tanya Harding.

Harding’s comments came as she delivered the Principal’s Report yesterday, during the school’s Speech Day and Prize Giving Ceremony.

“As a school, we continued to struggle against changing social norms, where the brand name of a bag or a pair of shoes is far more important to children than the books they carry to school; a society where children if given a choice, choose social media chats over doing homework; where hardworking single parents are frustrated by increasingly ungrateful children, who often have a feeling of entitlement,” the principal noted.

She added, “Major Michael Boyce was the Principal and I was the Deputy Principal. We spent many hours trying to figure out how we could improve our students at every level. We knew that sports was a strength, but we also knew that our students were capable of doing so much better, in their behaviour and academically.”

Recognising that some of the students had “serious anger management issues which arose from problems at home” and that many suffered from low self-esteem, Harding stated that it was acknowledged that greater ties had to be forged with parents.

To effect improvement, she further noted, every week, students discussed a different value with their form teachers; values such as good citizenship, respect, honesty, compassion, teamwork, reliability, discipline, responsibility and trustworthiness, punctuality, hard work, creativity and excellence.

Noting that Major Boyce, who went on to serve as principal of the Frederick Smith Secondary School would have written a proposal for a School Improvement Grant with the focus on literacy and numeracy, Harding said that students were rewarded at the end of Term for achieving averages of over 75 % .

The acting principal meanwhile stated that the school continued to perform moderately in the CXC CSEC results, although the overall pass rate dropped slight from 52.9 % to 51.3 percent overall. 100 % pass rates were nevertheless achieved in Industrial Technology – Building, Food, Nutrition and Health, Integrated Science, Physical Education and Sports and Theatre Arts. It was also noted that the Fourth Form students who were entered in EDPM (Electronic Document Preparation and Management) and English Language did particularly well, with 81.6 percent passes in English Language and 100 % passes in EDPM.

It was in the core subjects such as the Sciences, the General Studies subjects and Mathematics however, that results were disappointing. She however stated that it is expected with the implementation of CCSLC (Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence), that the results will improve in time, as students learn the skills required for CSEC earlier.

Harding also remarked that the school continued its partnership with the IICA (Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture), which saw the school being the centre for the CVQ Agrofood Processing Course Levels 1, 2 and 3. Additional Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ) have also been added in the form of Commercial Food Preparation – Agro Food Processing, Electrical Installation, Furniture Making, General Construction and Metal Work Engineering.

Harding however said that the Academic Year ended on a somewhat negative note since, “For all the good that happened in the school over the year, persons only remember the graphic videos of the fight which occurred in June”.
“The behaviour of a few, ruined the reputation of all,” she lamented. (RSM)