Driven but No Driver: Rural School Performs "Superbly" but lacks Adequate Resources

Students from Content Gap All-Age School gather around
the only computer at the school. -Photo By Diana Hall

“I have received many reports from other schools that my netball and football team have a lot of potential, even though they don’t have a coach to train them nor a field to practise on. The teams practise on an open lot in the town square,” says Mrs. Lillian Madden, the principal of an all-age school in rural St.Andrew, Jamaica.


Some members of the school's netball team practising
on the pathway at the front of the school. -Photo By Diana Hall


The school's football team at the National Stadium of Jamaica.
-Photo taken by Diana Hall, from a picture hang on a wall at the Content Gap All-Age School.

“The first time the football team played on a football field in Kingston, they felt lost. They weren’t use to the huge field.” However, Madden says she is motivated to go to work because of her love for the profession and the students. She has been a teacher at the school since 1979 and now teaches in addition to her administrative duties as principal.

She says although the school lacks the desired support from the Ministry of Education, students sometimes perform “superbly” in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) which assesses students between ages nine and 11, in the subject areas of mathematics, language arts, social studies and science, for a place in a secondary school. Madden says students have been placed in both traditional high schools such as St. George’s College, Ardenne, Wolmer’s Boys’ and Girls’ schools and non-traditional ones, including Mona and Priory. “I feel so proud when I see them graduating,” she says.

http://www.moec.gov.jm/divisions/ed/assessment/nap.htm