The cause of the fire that destroyed the St George’s High School is still unknown even as the Ministry of Education has already begun to relocate some of the affected students.

Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle on Friday, Fire Chief (ag) Gregory Wickham confirmed that the investigation into the cause of the fire is still ongoing, with the Guyana Fire Service still awaiting results on tests being carried out on samples retrieved from the site.

“We want to be very concise and complete before we give the cause of the fire [so] I would not be able to disclose any information at this point,” Wickham informed.
He added: “We have to ensure that at all times we cover all the ends. We don’t want to rush to say something that days after you have more information coming about the same thing. Sampling has also been done so we’re waiting for results to come in on some samples and other things we would’ve taken.”

Some 421 students have been displaced when a fire of unknown origin ravished the St George’s High School on Church Street. The fire was the third such fire at a secondary school in less than two years. The North Ruimveldt Multilateral School, in Georgetown, went up in flames in June 2021, while the Mabaruma Secondary School, in Region One, was also destroyed by a fire in September.

Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand had called the fire at St George’s High an extremely big loss as the school was one that the ministry had a lot of interest in because of what they could do with the school’s programmes and more.

In a recent interview with this publication, Minister Priya Manickchand noted that the Ministry of Education (MoE) has already begun to put measures in place to determine how they are going to place the students; however she emphasised that this is being done in consultation with the students and their parents.

“We are speaking individually to parents and students to determine how we’re going to place these students for September. It’s 421 students so we don’t know that there’s any particular school that can house them all, and even if there is, students are coming from very far and may not want to go to the school,” Minister Manickchand explained.

According to one news report, over 220 of the students have since been placed at new schools after the Ministry of Education (MoE) facilitated the move. In the meantime, no new students would be allocated a place at this school when the upcoming National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) results are released.

Grade Six pupils are placed in a secondary school based on their performance at the NGSA.
However, as pertains to whether or not the ministry will be rebuilding the school on location, Manickchand explained it would depend on several factors, particularly because the land that the school was located on is not owned by the Ministry of Education.

According to Minister Manickchand, the land is owned by the Anglican Church. Nonetheless, whether the school is rebuilt on location or not, Manickchand affirmed that a school needs to be built since most schools in the City are operating at maximum capacity.