THE islandwide space audit of secondary schools that was commissioned by the Education Ministry for secondary schools has been completed and is being circulated internally for discussions.

Sharon Wolfe, director of communications for the Education

Transformation Team, told the Observer that the internal discussions should be completed by November 28, so that the findings can be made public.

“This is very important information that the nation needs to know; as to how we are going to go about addressing the issue of space, which is very critical,” Wolfe said.

While not going into details, she said the results would be used to help in determining where new schools should be located, as well as deal with the critical element of space rationalisation.

“Part of the transformation mandate is to ensure that each child is in school. So that space audit will be used to make medium and long term plans for the location of schools to ensure that where children are, school spaces are available,” Wolfe noted.

In addition, she said the information would inform the design of schools, taking into consideration the student-teacher ratio recommended by the education taskforce.

The transformation team was commissioned by former prime minister P J Patterson. Its mandate was to aggressively implement more than 100 projects for the 2005/06 academic year geared at modernising education, under a multi-billion dollar plan to wring higher levels of performance from students, teachers, schools and their administrators based on the recommendations from a Task Force Report on Educational Reform.

In the meantime, Wolfe noted that a slew of plans were in the works for secondary schools in the Region Six area, which includes St Catherine and Clarendon.

Noting that St Catherine proved a worrying factor because of space constraints at a number of schools in the parish, Wolfe said “particular work and focus was currently being placed on that region to ensure that space is available”.

Again refraining from divulging details, the communications director said that within a few weeks the plans for the area would be ready.

According to Wolfe, “the transformation process is moving apace, it is moving in earnest”.

Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson, speaking of the audit at the start of the school year, said it would, among other things, allow the ministry to have an inventory of the conditions of the schools so it would know the needs for urgent and long-term repairs.

Henry-Wilson told the Observer that the audit would also serve to show areas in which there was a “mismatch between school space and demand as in areas where there had been surplus school spaces the population has shifted”.

Secondary schools account for close to 200 of the more than 1,000 of the island’s schools.