SOME 1,800 new GSAT students along with returning grades eight and nine Jose Marti Technical High School students will be forced to stay at home for up to three days each week because there is no space to accommodate them all at once.

This, as the Ministry of Education placed 600 additional GSAT (Grade Six Achievement Test) students at the school this year in the hope that they would have been accommodated in newly built classrooms.

But the classrooms are not scheduled to be completed until September 25.

Errol Levy, regional director for the Ministry of Education, told the Observer on Tuesday that under the staggered school week, each year group would take turns in the existing classrooms.

“For now, the students will come in on a stagger basis whereby when the grades seven and eight are at school, the grade nines will be out,” he said.

“There will be three days for one set, then two days for the other and it will alternate the next week,” he added.

He said grades 10 and 11 students would not be affected by the temporary arrangements as effort was being made to ensure that they have classes every day.

But school principal Bevar Moodie is not amused.

He told the Observer that the staggered system had become necessary because of a sharp increase in the number of students at the school.

Moodie said about 1,800 students had been placed at the school this year, up from 1,200 the previous year.

But Levy denied that the current situation was as a result of the increased number of GSAT students, saying the space problem was due to the fact that a number of classrooms under construction had not been completed in time for the new school year.

“We have placed the students there because we knew the construction is under way, and when the classrooms become available, the situation will be completely different and we will run a normal operation there,” Levy said.

But there is no guarantee that the classrooms will be completed on schedule, a situation which could force the school to implement a temporary shift system.

“If it is going to be that the buildings are not going to be ready then clearly there has to be a review of where we are at the moment, and we will have to start looking at a temporary shift system,” he told the Observer.

According to Levy, at this point it is not possible to stagger the school days for more than two weeks.

“The staggering, while it is convenient, won’t be useful for more than a two weeks period because anything longer than that and we will definitely have to look at putting the school on a temporary shift,” he said.

Moodie, for his part, said he is hoping that the new classrooms will be done in time for the students to return to a regular five-day school week before the October mid- term break.

Last month, the Ministry of Education announced that Jose Marti would be reshaped into two educational institutions operating from one premises.