Georgetown: Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand on Monday visited the newly built West Minster Secondary School located in La Parfaite Harmonie on the West Bank of Demerara, for its first official opening day for the new school year.
While addressing the students the Minister urged them to take full advantage of the opportunities and the resources presented to them.
She told the students that they all have the ability to succeed and have a bright future.
“If you were doing bad at school before and all your friends took off and left you behind, and you were coming last in the class…Today is your day to wipe the slate clean, say to yourselves ‘that, was my past, it will not be my future and when you get home work, sit down and do it…Today is the day you get to decide what the future of your life will look like.”
The Minister noted that the school serves an important role in providing educational support to the people of Region Three.
“Parents no longer have to take out a bus fare and a boat fare and send their children far away and worry about how far away they are. The school is opened to anyone in the community who wishes to attend high school,” the Minister said.
She then explained that with the establishment of the school, several Primary “tops” were closed.
“A primary top is where the student goes to a primary school and there’s no space in any secondary school in the region for them, so they continue on in Primary and call themselves Secondary students. That is not, as I’m sure you would agree, the proper or optimum way to be educating children…There are three primary tops closed here…that have been closed completely and those children are now coming to this school. A proper, discrete Secondary school with all the facilities and I guarantee you, you’re going to see them doing better.”
The Minister expressed her satisfaction with the facilities at the school, noting that they have the potential to deliver remarkable results.
“The facilities are beautiful; the school is well poised to deliver top students in this region and therefore children who would be well rounded to take over Guyana.”
Meanwhile, Head Teacher, Tulsidi Raghubansi said she foresees numerous opportunities unfolding for the students.
“The children that are coming here, I think that they are getting an opportunity of their life to make a dream come through because most of these children are coming from schools that they may not have had the kind of opportunities that they would get here. So, you can see an unfolding of experience for them,” she noted.
The newly-constructed $1 billion school is the first state-of the art facility to be completed under the Government’s Guyana Secondary Education Improvement Project (SEIP).
The school has 32 classrooms, a language lab, dance studio, library, Physics, Chemistry and Biology laboratories, an Information Technology Laboratory, a theatre room, a Mathematics laboratory, Home Economics Laboratory and an Agriculture Science Laboratory, among other facilities built to provide the best education to the nation’s children.
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