Outstanding principal of Padmore Primary School in St Andrew Keisha Hayle has won another award.

On Saturday, July 22, Hayle was awarded the Exemplary Leadership and Community Award for her contribution to education and the community by Jamaica Education Task Force (JET) United Kingdom. She also won the award in 2018.

JET UK rewards outstanding performances in education and community volunteerism.

Hayle followed the award ceremony by Zoom and thanked JET for the gesture in a video.

“I want to take this opportunity to thank JET UK, its management and the board for giving me this excellent award – Exemplary Award for Leadership. I am quite ecstatic, and on behalf of my school, students, teachers, the Ministry of Education, and Jamaica at large I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

“It has not been an easy task from COVID stepped in to ensure teaching and learning at my school, Padmore Primary, but JET UK, with your leader Seymour Mattis, he has done all he can, especially for the schools in Jamaica that need resources to help with the classroom experience. So on behalf of those schools and my school I must thank you again.

“The resources and all the classes to ensure that our teachers act with the STEM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics] curriculum has paid off. It saw our students going to top high schools in the PEP [Primary Exit Profile] exams over four years now, consistently. We have about 90 per cent of our students getting schools of their choice, and JET UK, you are a part of this, and I want to laud you this evening for your tremendous programmes to help our teachers to teach the PEP curriculum. I am praying and hoping that you go from strength to strength to ensure that other schools can benefit from all the resources that you send back to Jamaica.

“Thank you again, wholeheartedly, for the award,” Hayle said.

The Sunday Observer last week featured Hayle, who rescued Padmore Primary School from closure 12 years ago after it was deemed by the Ministry of Education to be a “failed school”, saying that she would like to one day become Minister of Education.

She has been earmarked as the Opposition People’s National Party’s candidate for St Andrew West Rural in the next general election, following a strong showing in an opinion poll commissioned by the PNP. Before that, she was also pencilled in as a candidate to contest the Red Hills Division in the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation, although mystery surrounds when that will be held, following a series of postponements by the ruling Jamaica Labour Party Government.