New secondary school in the works

BARBADIAN PARENTS now have an addition to their children’s educational choices, as the management of Providence Elementary School will introduce a secondary level to their institution from the next academic year.Chairman of the school’s board of trustees, Eugene Melnyk, during a brief interview with the DAILY NATION, said that the private St George institution had already started to teach students “beneficial principles for life in the primary level”.“And we are opening the secondary level to continue and build upon that foundation,” he stated.“The school begins in September in first form, and then the following year we will add second and third form. The year after that, we will include the fourth and fifth forms. “One thing we have learnt in our experience when creating the primary school was that you take your time. You want to ensure that you have good quality teachers (and) that the curriculum is correct,” Melnyk said.    However, he admitted that it was not easy to expand the school’s population in the current difficult economic times, but Barbados would withstand the storm.“What we cannot do is sacrifice at this point the quality of education we have in Barbados. That would be the biggest mistake I think a country could make. That would be jeopardising the future of the country to save a little bit of money,” he told the DAILY NATION. (AH)