THE Jamaica Observer yesterday rewarded the schools and teachers that participate in its Study Centre programme, and won praise from the top school, Naggo Head Primary, for helping students excel at GSAT and CXC examinations.

“The Jamaica Observer, through its Study Centre, is helping us at Naggo Head Primary to carry out the mandate to broaden our students’ minds and to promote excellence,” Naggo Head grade six teacher, Prim Lewis, told over 100 colleagues at the awards function at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.

“The Study Centre… has been a staple in our children’s educational diet for the past year, and we intend to continue to nourish them with it,” Lewis said, before announcing that the lessons in the publication helped to produce two government scholarship winners, one Burger King scholar, and one Blue Cross scholar from her school this year.

Two of those scholarships, she said, went to Kemar England, who also received a third scholarship by winning the Butterkist/Nabisco All-Island Math Competition.

The Observer Study Centre is circulated with the Daily Observer on Tuesdays, and features GSAT and CXC lessons in English A and B, Information Technology, Mathematics, SAT College Guide, SAT Verbal, Language Arts/Communication Skills, Social Studies, Science, Principles of Business, Office Procedures, Principles of Accounting, Food/Nutrition, and Integrated Science.

Lewis, who sold more than 13,800 copies of the weekly publication at her school in the 2002 – 2003 academic year, was presented with two Air Jamaica tickets to any of the national airline’s Caribbean destinations and a gift voucher from Courts furniture store.

Teachers from the other schools making up the top five sellers won weekends at Sandals resorts in Jamaica.

The teachers from the 25 schools with top volume sales each received certificates and vouchers redeemable at SuperPlus supermarkets.

Contributors to the publication each received a copy of Bearing Witness 2003, a collection of the best submissions to the Sunday Observer’s Literary Arts magazine, and those contributors who teach at secondary schools were each presented with two sets of the CXC Lecture Series books for their school libraries.

Observer managing director, Mark Pritchett, who gave the keynote address, reminded the educators that although academics were crucial to development, character education was essential to nation building.

“Character education lies at the heart of a better Jamaica,” he said, stressing the importance of concerted efforts of parents, teachers, the wider community and the media in the education of the entire being.

Pritchett also used his address to call on the Government to roll back the general consumption tax on newspapers, arguing that it was a tax on literacy and intelligence.

Since being introduced in 1997, the Observer Study Centre has made such an impact in classrooms and as a supplementary teaching aid that today, the Observer publishes past issues of the CXC papers in a collection called the CXC Lecture Series. A similar series is currently being developed for GSAT students.