Students in a class at St Jago High School in St Catherine. - Norman Grindley/ Deputy Chief Photographer

Students and teachers at St Jago High School in Spanish Town, St Catherine, are gearing up for this year's Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations in a bid to ensure that they maintain the school's tradition of high passes.

Principal Sandra Swyer-Watson said she is confident that the crop of students to sit this year's exams will do well, as long as they settle down and are prepared.

"We have been tracking the performance of our students and we have been doing better and better every year," she told The Gleaner.

"The aim we have at St Jago High is not just to pass exams, what we want are quality passes," she said.

Seminars and workshops

Watson said the school has, over the years, implemented and maintained a number of programmes to assist in the students' preparation for external exams, including various seminars and workshops.

"We have our regular evening institute that we encourage our students to attend, particularly those who might be a little bit behind," she said.

The principal further said that students are encouraged to attend as many CSEC seminars as possible whenever they are held across the island.

"Whenever we hear of a seminar or a workshop anywhere, we try to ensure that our students are part of it. Just recently, we sent them out to a few seminars that were held at the University of the West Indies," she informed.

She said the school also has an Easter workshop for mathematics and English where the students come in during their midterm break to concentrate solely on those two subjects for four to five days.

"The Easter workshop usually comes after we've done our mid-year exams, so we can see what their weaknesses are and we focus heavily on those," she said. "This year, we did our exams at the end of December, rather than in February, to give us more time to identify these weak areas and more time to catch up on them."

Internal exams throughout the school term are also geared towards preparing students for their CSEC papers. The school has a policy whereby students with an average of 70 per cent are awarded with a star. Watson, however, said that she has encouraged teachers to adjust this and give stars only to students with an 80 per cent average.

Encouragement

"We have to encourage the students to maintain an A average," she said. "For most of our students who come here, they would have had to get an 80 per cent or higher in their Grade Six Achievement Test, so why should we lessen the standard. We know they are capable of scoring high marks and that's what we want them to do," she added.

Watson said CSEC maths and English have been two of the school's strongest subjects.

The school had a 77 per cent pass in CSEC mathematics and a similar 76 per cent for English.

"We usually send all our students to sit those two subjects unless they already passed the subjects from fourth form," she added.

athaliah.reynolds@gleanerjm.com