THE Ministry of Education is coming under fire from a former chief education officer, who is expressing alarm at the decision to expand the struggling Marcus Garvey Technical High School in St Ann.

The school, located in the parish capital St Ann’s Bay, has been given an additional campus — in Mansfield Heights, Ocho Rios — and come September will no longer be operated on the shift system as its 2,400 students will be divided across both campuses.

Marcus Garvey High Principal Leslie Riley told the Jamaica Observer that with construction of the new Steer Town High School nearing completion, the ministry had advised that his school would assume control of the Mansfield Heights school plant, which for the past two years had been accommodating students of Steer Town High.

“They have given us a new school facility, so our grade seven and grade eight students will be going there and the main campus in St Ann’s Bay will have grades 9, 10 and 11, and so we will operate both campuses from 8 o’clock to 3 o’clock,” said Riley, who added that one of his three vice-principals will be placed in charge of the Mansfield campus.

The Mansfield Heights school plant was completed in 2009 as a primary school, but in a desperate bid to satisfy the need for spaces, the education ministry opened it as a high school to accommodate students who were placed at Steer Town High which, at the time, was under construction.

The school principal is convinced that the additional plant will reduce overcrowding at the St Ann’s Bay campus and will also result in improved student performance.

But former Chief Education Officer Jasper Lawrence is expressing outrage at the decision and is suggesting that the ministry has made a major blunder.

“You should not grant one of the least performing schools an additional campus. We may end up with a situation similar to what we have at Trench Town [High] where only 600 students attend a school that can accommodate 1,200,” Lawrence said.

“The ministry’s decision should be data driven, the CSEC (Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate) results for the last four years would indicate that that school is at the bottom of the performance pile,” added Lawrence as he emphasised that the Mansfield campus should have been given to stronger schools such as York Castle or Ocho Rios high.

He also made reference to a recent report of the National Education Inspectorate (NEI) which classified Marcus Garvey High as a ‘failing school’, with weak leadership and underperformance in almost all areas.

According to Lawrence, who resides in St Ann and who is highly respected by many stakeholders in the parish, the school is not attractive to parents, many of whom are making transfer requests to other schools.

“What they do in other jurisdictions, for instance, is not to replicate weaknesses, but they replicate strengths. If we look at the charter schools in North America, it is the ones that are doing very well that go about setting up additional campuses,” said Lawrence, who insisted that he has no personal issue with the school’s leadership as the principal is someone he knows quite well.

For many years, Marcus Garvey High has been at the receiving end of much negative publicity, stemming from regular stabbing incidents involving students, gang warfare, poor leadership and more recently, the damning NEI report.