Seaside Primary sees academic boost with new tech, comfort
Published:Friday | October 18, 2024 | 12:06 AMGareth Davis Sr/Gleaner Writer
Hectors River, Portland:
In its quest to create a cooler and more functional learning environment, Seaside Primary School in east Portland has retrofitted four of seven classrooms with air-conditioning (AC) units while also ensuring that the youngsters are exposed to advances in technology.
On Thursday, Principal Adli Lewis was still basking in the glow of the upgrade, which he said was realised through stakeholder partnerships involving students, teachers, parents, and the business community.
Lewis recounted that previously, there were days when the hot conditions persisted and it was, basically, unbearable for students and teachers. He pointed out that the school has come a far away.
He noted that the technological devices were courtesy of the Paul Miles Foundation. There are more than 80 Chromebooks and 30 desktop computers in use at the school.
“I extend a big thank you to all our stakeholders,” Lewis said.
“So we have been transforming our classroom spaces over the past couple of years. We have embarked on a mission to transform our classrooms into 21st century learning spaces in terms of technology, in terms of how you feel, in terms of how you learn, and even the very lessons that are taught in those places.
“So it started out with the technology, where we introduced multimedia, laptops, [and] Chromebooks, and we are at the point now where we are looking at the classroom environment [in terms of] how students feel, how teachers feel in the workspace, and how they feel in the classroom space so as to make them more comfortable and to make the environment more conducive to learning.”
According to the principal, the school embarked on a three-year programme that started out with the replacement of classroom windows. The programme then moved into retrofitting the classrooms by closing out spaces to make them suitable for the AC units, and then the final stage was the installation of the AC units for comfort and relaxation.
“We had to acquire the AC units, which come at a cost, and also to upgrade and wire the electrical system in the school. What we have done is to partner with our stakeholders and students, along with their classroom teachers, who had a target at the start of the new school year to raise $30,000 on their own towards the AC units. So far, four classes have met their targets, and one class superseded their target in one day by making over $50,000,” Lewis added.
“We are well ahead of the game. When I read the newspaper or watch the news and I hear the Honourable Minister [Fayval Williams] speak about their plans to retrofit classrooms with multimedia projectors and have laptops and labs, we at Seaside Primary are two or three years into having these things,” said the principal.
He said the school has also seen an improvement in students’ academic performance.
“We have doubled some of our numbers in terms of proficiency in PEP (Primary Exit Profile). There is growth in terms of student passes. We have a 64 per cent pass rate, and we are coming from a 40 per cent pass rate.
“[Even in our] worst-performing subject, the growth is there and the numbers are doubling. I believe it is attributed to the fact that we are able to use technology to make up for where we are lacking,” Lewis concluded.