THE Guyana Education Trust College is celebrating its 20th year in service. The school, which was established as a way of bridging the gap between a higher quality of education and affordability, has since its establishment achieved its goal.

Chairman of the school’s Board, Samuel Tross, speaking on the school’s history, related to the Guyana Chronicle the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the school. He said that it was never his intention to start a school, since he had never had that level of expertise in the education sector. Tross further related that the school started out of necessity and bloomed into what it is today.

“Let me tell you how the school started, the building in front there was rented to a gentleman who had a school there. After a while of operating the school he had migrated. He left in December 1998 and he had some students here. At the beginning of 1999, January, the parents and the teachers that he had approached me as owner of the premises saying that the school should continue because of course, come early January, the children had to go to school, and I said no, because I did not have that experience in the education sector.”

He said he considered a suggestion from some colleagues and approached the then Chief Education Officer, Ed Caesar, with the proposal that the school commences operation in January of 1999. He was told however, that the school must commence at the beginning of the school year in September.

Tross further related that upon returning to the Ministry of Education in September, he was granted permission to set up the school, and so the school started. He explained that even though the school was very new, it had a healthy intake of around 50 students, which at the time, he did not expect. He further explained that the school only took children from forms one to three because they wanted to ensure that the children had a solid foundation before allowing them to sit the CSEC examinations.

He went on to say that a board was put in place to govern the operations of the school, and that the members of the board were chosen based on their level of expertise in the education sector. Tross explained that there are persons on the board who have served as, Ex Ministers of Education; past Chief Education Officers within the ministry; senior lecturers at the University of Guyana; and past head teachers of senior secondary schools across the country.

Tross said that the vision of the school was to provide a chance for students, particularly those who did not gain top schools, to excel and at an affordable cost.

“Essentially what is important about the school is that our fees are the lowest, compared to other private schools and it is specifically done that way because we want to attract poor people. I call it the lower socio-economic brigade. Children who have been sent to schools that have not been doing very well, whose parents were looking for somewhere to take them that would push them to perform and excel, but that they could still afford. From the very first time the board met that was the objective and that objective has remained to this day,” he said.

Tross stated that the school could not function effectively and achieve its goals without the leadership and sacrifice of the expert teachers.

He said the school’s board worked expeditiously to ensure that the students of the school were given every opportunity to learn from some of the best in the education sector.

Throughout the years following the school’s establishment, the board has implemented several new systems to ensure that the students of the school are given every opportunity for continued success. The board had budgeted for the creation of several laboratories, inclusive of an information technology lab, a food and nutrition lab, a technical drawing facility, as well as a science lab to facilitate the teaching of Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
Tross stated that these labs were created to ensure that the students have the opportunity to remain competitive in the academic world. He related that the students needed new and updated spaces to ensure that they could actually excel in the varying subject areas.

He further stated that the school has, since its establishment, been doing exceedingly well at the CSEC examinations, stating that just this year, the school recorded a 100 per cent pass rate at the examinations with the top two students securing passes in all 12 of the subjects they wrote. He said regardless of where the students come from, the school can change their lives and be a guiding hand in enabling them to achieve their full potential.

“I describe this school as taking brass and turning it into gold… children have come here after being sent to schools with a [bad] reputation of nothing and we have taken that and our results are startling, all professionals have come out of this school:- doctors, people have done law, people have done international relations abroad, managers and so on and so forth, and the teachers have also been making a sacrifice because they aren’t paid the biggest salaries, but they make the sacrifice to ensure that this section of society benefits and that is the point I want to stress. This school has seen so many success stories, and we are extremely proud of our students as we see them have the opportunity to grow in this society, and have every bit of their individual potentials reached… we plan on having this school here for a long time impacting the academic lives of all youths all across Guyana,” he said.