KINGSTON, Jamaica – Under the leadership of Principal Leighton Christie, Papine High School is working on building a reputation of success in the traditional subject areas. The school has always been recognised for its outstanding performance in the technical and vocational subjects.

The school has been working on measures that will boost student achievement in mathematics, English language, English literature, social studies, human and social biology, and chemistry, among other subjects.

“We have tried, over time, to improve what we are doing at the institution, in terms of the academic progress of the students and this is something that we have… started for the past five or six years now (and will continue),” Christie tells JIS News in a recent interview.

He says the aim is to ensure that students are fully equipped to pursue higher education or to enter the workforce.

“We focus a lot on the vocational training and twinned with that now are the core subject areas, the academic areas, so we place emphasis too on those because we want when our children leave the institution, they can matriculate into tertiary institutions and they can move on to the world of work,” he notes.

The school has seen improvement in almost all subject areas from the 2014 sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.

Papine High scored major improvement in mathematics at CSEC for 2014, with a 39 percentage point increase over 2013. A total of 123 students sat the examination, with 59 per cent receiving passes, an improvement over the 20 per cent pass rate in 2013.

This improvement is due to an initiative the school benefited from that was implemented by the ministry’s National Mathematics Team to improve outcomes in mathematics. It was among 96 schools that benefited from the programme across the island.

Christie informed JIS News that passes in English language moved from 40 per cent to 60 per cent. “For the sciences (particularly), human and social biology, we have been doing very well in that too, with over 70 per cent of the cohort sitting (that examination) and we are steadily moving up in that area,” he indicated.

The school continues to receive high passes in the vocational subject areas; he says most of the passes attained were in the “high 90s, going over to 100 per cent in some areas”.

“In the results we have last year, all those students in food, clothing, management, they have all passed. When we take building construction again for example, we have 26 students selecting that area and they are all passing,” he informed. 

Christie commends the effort of the teachers and the partnerships that have been forged with the University of the West Indies (UWI), the University of Technology, and the HEART Trust/NTA’s Vocational Training Development Institute (VTDI).

He noted that UTech teachers have been providing instruction in physics under a programme introduced three years ago.

“We also use the lab facilities at UTech on the weekends for the students, so that is the sort of support that we get from them,” he said.

Christie said that UWI has been providing training for staff to enhance their professional development.

“Any programme we call on them to support, they do support us,” he told JIS News, adding that collaborations are ongoing with the HEART Trust/NTA.

The academic performance of the school will remain top priority, Christie indicated, and called on everyone to come on board and support the initiative.