GREEN POND High School principal Michael Ellis says a business approach is the key to his school emerging the most outstanding institution under the Centres of Excellence programme.

The five-year programme, funded by the Victoria Mutual and Jamaica National Building Society, sought to transform six rural non-traditional high schools in Jamaica.

Ellis told Career & Education that Green Pond, based in St James, focused on the effectiveness of middle managers and surveys which he said were conducted to seek feedback.

“Most of our surveys were conducted using a five-point scale which sought to get feedback from teachers, students and parents to see how best we could please everyone at Green Pond High. Once you are comfortable, it is likely that less chaos will be present,” he said.

Ellis said action research was implemented so that areas of concern within the school could be easily remedied.

“Through research we quantified and desegregated data to look into areas like canteen service, student-teacher relationships and the feedback from students was used to actualise their satisfaction levels,” he said.

Ellis mentioned that to carry out research on his school effectively, he had appointed a dean of teaching, learning and research to oversee and carry out the field work to make this a successful venture.

“After this dean was appointed, we used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to conduct our studies. We had case studies done and questionnaires handed out to garner responses from the entire school community, parents, teachers and students to see what needed to be done,” he said.

He said from the research conducted, he was better able to improve the discipline at Green Pond High.

Ellis outlined that apart from a managerial approach, his administration has implemented a teamwork approach to achieve excellence. “Green Pond is led by various committees such as the school management team, curriculum committee, technology committee, aesthetics committee and a publishing committee so that ills of the administration can be easily identified and fixed,” he said.

“I am elated, ecstatic and on top of the world, there are no adjectives to describe how I feel at this point. Through research we put in a lot of work to move from the status as an underachieving non-traditional high school and I can proudly say our school has become the choice of many parents,” he said.

Under the Centres of Excellence programme, Green Pond High was deemed the most improved school in CSEC results. They also got awards for being the most outstanding school for leadership, and for excellence in mathematics, school-implemented and practised initiatives, the pathways to excellence programme and English language results.