EIGHTEEN years ago, St Peter Claver Primary School in Kingston was criticised for its poor academic performance and mediocrity.

However, today the school boasts three scholarship recipients as proof of its transformation.

Hamesh Creighton earned the 2006 Marcus Garvey Scholarship after scoring the highest overall on the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) for primary and all-age schools islandwide. Creighton joins Sycaro Reese and Jevaugha Johnson – St Peter Claver’s other scholarship recipients – at Campion College.

Acting principal Karen Jackson-Reynolds has attribut-ed the success to the hard work of principal Margaret Brissette-Bolt and the assistance given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We have really grown. The image of the school has changed and positive things are happening. I don’t have enough space to hold the amount of students who want to attend our school,” Jackson-Reynolds said yesterday, following a tour of the school by US Ambassador Brenda LaGrange Johnson.

St Peter Claver Primary, located in the tough Waltham Park area of the nation’s capital, Kingston, was among 71 primary schools that USAID/Jamaica selected for its seven-year New Horizons for Primary Schools Project (NHP), which ended last year.

Aspects of the programme included the provision of reading and mathematics material, the establishment of nutritional programmes, donation of computers to participating schools, and the training of local teachers in educational technology.

Meanwhile, USAID/Jamaica’s new five-year education project – Expanding Educational Horizons (EEH) – has been building on the NHP project.

Yesterday, Kimberly Flower, USAID’s development outreach and communi-cations officer, said her agency would continue to provide material, equipment, software, and teacher training for grades one to four at participating schools. The NHP, she said, had focused on students in grades one to six.

The EEH project, said Flower, would also be addressing the marginalisation of Jamaican males in schools by focusing on gender issues. This, she said, would include the creation of volunteer mentoring programmes for young boys in an attempt to improve the educational prospects of boys who traditionally underperform