The William Knibb High School and the newly built Hague Primary and Infant School will be among the schools in Trelawny to benefit from visits from the winners of the United Kingdom’s National Teachers Awards (NTA).

The four primary school principals and one science education secondary school teacher who are presently in the island on an exchange programme will visit the two schools next Wednesday as part of their ten-day prize- winning trip to Jamaica.

According to Maurice Smith, the education ministry’s region three community relations education officer and programme co-ordinator, this is the first time that Jamaica is hosting the winners of the prestigious NTA awards as part of its annual UK Study Visit programme.

The NTA programme, he said, celebrates excellence in innovation, school management, instructional leadership and curriculum delivery by UK teachers, and is an annual competition that recognises top teachers in their respective fields.

The five teachers arrived on Tuesday and over their ten-day visit will tour some nine schools including the University of the West Indies (UWI) and participate in seminars organised by the ministry.

Their first visit was to St Hilda’s High School

for Girls in Brown’s Town, St Ann, where they participated in the school’s devotional exercise, enjoyed a cultural entertainment package, toured the school and met with school administrators and teachers.

“There are some similarities here with the structure

in England,” Maureen Perry, the retired head of

the St Benedict catholic school in Coventory, England, said yesterday.

She added that she was very impressed with the deportment of the girls and the way they presented the cultural items. “It’s very inspiring,” she said.

The other awardees include Ceri Evans, a science teacher at Gable Hall Secondary School in Essex, Gerry Curran,head teacher of the Featherstone Primary School, Tracy Stone, head teacher at Rookery Primary in Burmingham, and Hilary Cook, the special needs co-ordinator at the Lauriston School in Hackney, East London.

While here the five will participate in seminars on education transformation, the Programme for Alternative Student Support (PASS) and managing school trauma. They will also job-shadow school principals, observe the teaching and learning process in the selected schools, and meet with school boards and PTA executives as well as interact with classroom teachers and students.

Smith said the next batch of the UK Study Visit teachers arrive in the island in February 2008 and will focus on education in inner-city communities. The programmes are fully funded by the League for the Exchange of Commonwealth Teachers (LECT).