St James PEP students jubilant about successful results
Published:Saturday | June 24, 2023 | 1:06 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
THERE WAS great jubilation at several primary schools in St James yesterday as students got the results of their Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations, with many children and their parents celebrating their conquest of this year’s staging of the exam.
At Corinaldi Avenue Primary School in Montego Bay, the 236 students who successfully sat and passed their exams were unable to contain their excitement as they leaped for joy and exchanged embraces with their parents, their teachers and each other upon receiving their results.
“We feel good, we feel good. It’s a very overwhelming feeling,” Jada Bowen, one of Corinaldi Avenue Primary’s cohort of PEP students, told The Gleaner in between screams of joy alongside her classmates.
That sense of accomplishment was echoed by Corinaldi’s principal Deon Stern-Anglin, herself a past student of the school, as she explained that 80 per cent of the 236 students were placed on PEP’s Pathway 1 tier, for students who performed satisfactorily.
“Eighty per cent of our students who took the exam are on Pathway 1, the highest pathway, while 17.9 per cent were on Pathway 2 [for those students with some form of delayed learning], and 2.1 per cent on Pathway 3 [for students with special needs]. The majority of our students passed for Herbert Morrison Technical High School, the most outstanding numbers, and I am proud of the achievement of the students because this year has been an awesome year,” said Stern-Anglin.
The celebratory mood was just as high and active at the John Rollins Success Primary School in Rose Hall, as principal Yvonne Miller-Wisdom revealed that her cohort of 170 PEP students was successfully placed at their various choices of high schools in St James and other parishes.
“The results are good, although we did not have the time to do a detailed analysis of the results, as I am still at school responding to parents. But we have students doing extremely well and being placed at our top schools,” said Miller-Wisdom.
“Those schools include Montego Bay High School, Mt Alvernia High School, Herbert Morrison Technical High School, and Cornwall College, plus Westwood High School and William Knibb Memorial High School in Trelawny, St Hilda’s Diocesan High School in St Ann, and Merl Grove High School in Kingston. So we have a mixture of placements, and a lot of them were jumping for joy, and their parents as well,” Miller-Wisdom added.
Meanwhile, at the Sudbury Primary School in Sign district, principal Susan Davis was more reserved but equally proud as she explained about the performance of her institution’s 30 PEP students.
“Eleven students were placed on Pathway 1, and only two got Pathway 3. But all the students were placed at various high schools such as Montego Bay High, Mt Alvernia High, St James High, Anchovy High School, Green Pond High School, and William Knibb and Muschett High in Trelawny,” said Davis.
“Some of the parents are pretty excited, some are disappointed, and some just want to know that their children are placed in high school. I am satisfied with the results, as we had been faced with a few challenges this year with our children, mostly behavioural challenges, but despite those challenges they did fairly well,” Davis added.