WHEN Orlando Jones took over the leadership of Eagle Hall Primary School a year ago, his mandate was to turn the school around.
The principal believes he is on his way to achieving that goal at the school, which has a roll of 315 students.
This week, Eagle Hall took a giant leap forward when Rheanna King, of Class 4, became the first student from the school to score in the top ten in the Common Entrance Examination. She also received the only perfect score in English out of the over 3 000 who sat the exam.
“It is a historic occasion for the school,”?Jones declared proudly, as he spoke about some of the challenges he encountered when he took over the school which nestles within the Bridge Gap community, off Black Rock Road.
“I?felt out the different vibes within the school and the community and I?moved to put a lot of programmes in place with the help of the Ministry of Education, Erdiston Teachers’ College as well as the teachers,” the school principal said.
He nicknamed the school Run Eagle Hall and placed a lot of emphasis on teamwork.
“The school was ‘under intervention’ by the ministry because of a lot of bad practices that had occurred in the past,” he said, pointing out that officers from the ministry came into the school to observe classes and assist with best teaching practices. In addition, he said Erdiston College also provided valuable help.
Last April, the school implemented a specialisation programme in which teachers taught a particular subject from Infants A through to Class 3.
“I observed that system and saw the advantages and disadvantages and in September we resorted to individual classes and mixed the children randomly. There was a lot of differentiated instruction taking place and we focused on more individualised and smaller groups within the group in the classroom.”
In addition, to further motivate the children, Jones said the classrooms were renamed after the two former principals at the school – Bertram Murray and Eustine Dash.
“So we had form 1Dash or 2Murray and so on. This was to give the children someone to emulate.”
