LAST year, Antarrio Clarke, principal of City College in St Andrew, vowed to work with students who received low averages on their Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) and make them into success stories.

Clarke has lived up to his word, and today several of the students, some of whom are dyslexic, are maintaining averages ranging from 65 to 90 per cent.

For Clarke, these students, who were previously written off, are doing much better than when they entered the school.

“In the minds of the parents they didn’t pass GSAT because they didn’t go to a traditional school, but we believe in transformation and that’s what happened,” he said.

The key to the improvement in averages, according to Clarke centres on the class sizes at City College.

“The classes range from 15 to 20 students per class, so individual attention can be given to each student. If the classes had 40 students, the child with the most needs would likely not be noticed,” he said.

Keizanae Abrahams, one of the improved students, had felt all hope was lost when she was not placed in a traditional high school. Today she is a proud student averaging in the 90s.

At the school’s recent awards ceremony, Abrahams copped eight awards for excellence and topped her class and grade overall.

She credits her improvement to the individual attention she has been getting at City College.

“I don’t have a problem explaining myself to the teacher or seeking extra help and feeling insecure about it. The class numbers are small and the teachers look out for us. I get more attention and I am self-motivated,” Abrahams said.

Though the fees may be challenging for some parents, weekly payment plans are available and Clarke said for students like Abrahams who display a zeal for learning, scholarships are available.

Another proud moment for Clarke was seeing a dyslexic student move from a below 20 average to a 65 per cent average with the help of a specialist and of teachers who have literacy as a key component of their training.

“I have to commend the teamwork our teachers put in. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. They are the mothers and counsellors to the youngsters. With help we were able to decipher that she was highly dyslexic and we worked with her and she has really improved,” Clarke said.

But Clarke believes that parents should do more for their children with regard to their education.

“More parents need to come on board. Whenever anything holistic is happening parents tend to partner with the schools much slower than expected. The parents who partner with the schools, their children tend to always be on top,” he said.

Additionally, he said at the upper school levels students should not be forced into subject areas or syllabus content they will never use in life or their desired professions.

“It makes no sense teaching a student who is interested in business about certain specialist areas in mathematics. Teach them about percentages, profit and loss and things they’ll need to understand to succeed in their field. I would love someone to tell me how vectors and Pythagoras’ theorem has ever helped me or anyone doing social work,” Clarke said.

He further added that the irrelevance of certain topics in the school syllabus, especially mathematics, may be the reason students fear the subject.

“I you teach them what will be useful to them, their interests will be piqued. When children get to the point of selecting their subjects they have a career choice in mind. If a person is geared towards business or arts, teaching them topics useful to an engineer is a waste of time,” he said.

Among other things promised by Clarke was the introduction of a personal development programme to help groom students to function outside of school.

Child advocate and guidance counsellor at the institution, Carol Samuels, who Clarke said has been with the school for almost three years, spearheaded the programme.

“She came in and assessed the students and was able to identify psychosocial problems in some. They were referred to professionals and the school now has a policy of not readmitting ‘troubled children’ unless they go through the full session with professionals as well as with maximum input from the parents. Parents must understand that a regular high school is not a day care centre,” he said.

Clarke added that the math intervention programme which was also promised and led by Carla Cole was compulsory and required students to do math once per week outside of their regular class schedules.

Moreover, Clarke said the sixth form programme which catered for students who were not accepted into other sixth forms because of space restrictions or not having a particular subject, merged with the math intervention programme to further assist students in the lower school.

The sixth formers as well as the rest of the school body participate in training and development programmes similar to the Heart Trust/NTA courses. All sixth formers must do at least four development courses alongside CAPE. This is geared towards making the students more rounded individuals.

Clarke said the top performers seem set to tackle CSEC exams from as early as the ninth grade.