CONSTRUCTION of a new Rose’s High School building is on schedule to be completed by the end of June, while work at a number of other secondary schools, including the problem-plagued Good Hope Secondary and Yarrowkabra Secondary Schools, are expected to be completed in time for the September opening of the new school year.

Other schools where construction is expected to be completed by September include Abram Zuil Secondary in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) which is being renovated and Queen’s College, The Bishop’s High, East Ruimveldt Secondary, and St Winifred’s Secondary in Georgetown, which are being expanded to accommodate more students.

Also in Georgetown, work on rebuilding the North Ruimveldt Multilateral Secondary School, which was destroyed by fire in 2021, is expected to be completed by October.

Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, made these disclosures on Wednesday during a contract signing, at the ministry’s Brickdam office, for the construction of Christ Church Secondary School, which was destroyed by fire in January.

“For the start of September, we will have Queen’s College, Bishop’s, St Rose’s, Good Hope, Yarrowkabra, Abram Zuil, East Ruimveldt, St. Winifred’s. These schools are all going to be finished and that will allow us to accommodate significantly more children,” Manickchand related.

“North Ruimveldt should be finished by October of this year. Even as we do that, we are rebuilding Christ Church and the St. George’s [Secondary]. The Cabinet recently offered its no objection [for a contract awarded to rebuild the school]. Even as we are doing those [bids for construction at other schools], others have been put out in the general public so that all the world can bid on them. It is really trying to get us to a place where we have universal secondary education,” she added.

Works at all of these schools are part of the government’s overarching target to achieve universal secondary education, that is, access to a secondary school for all eligible students, all across the country.

The expansions and constructions are part of the MoE’s plans to widen intake capacity at several secondary schools countrywide.

While construction at most of the schools has only been going on for the past few months, the completion of works at the St Rose’s High, Good Hope Secondary and Yarrowkabra Secondary will mark the end of a very taxing journey and lengthy delays.

In the case of St Rose’s High, it has been almost five years since the school’s former wooden building facing Church Street was demolished to make way for the construction of a new, modern building.

In August 2018, a $352 million contract was awarded to Courtney Benn Contracting Services to complete the new building by April 2020. However, that contract was terminated in November 2020, after it was realised that the contractor had only completed nine percent of the work and no attempt was being made to speed things up.

In September 2021, a new contract worth $515 million was signed with Shandong Degian International to complete the building.

During Wednesday’s press conference, MoE’s Permanent Secretary, Alfred King, explained that the contractor has started to step up the pace on the construction since it is slightly behind schedule.

“There is about a five per cent lagging in terms of timeline and the contractors as we speak are trying to put a shift system in place… So, by the end of this month the school should be ready to be handed over,” King explained.

Like St Rose’s, the schools at Yarrowkabra and Good Hope have seen protracted construction.

Both of these schools fall under the Guyana Secondary Education Improvement Project (GSEIP). This programme was first conceptualised in 2014, receiving US$10 million in financing from the World Bank and covers the construction of four secondary schools, of which only one has been completed so far.
Construction on the Good Hope Secondary commenced in 2018, while the contract for the Yarrowkabra Secondary was signed in 2019. In both cases the schools were being worked on by BK International Inc, and those contracts were terminated by the government.

A contract for the completion of Yarrowkabra was later awarded to R. Bassoo and Sons.