Sod turned for the expansion of the East Ruimveldt and St.Winefride’s Secondary Schools

In keeping with the Government’s vision to build, expand and improve educational facilities across Guyana, the Honourable Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, turned the sod for the expansion of two schools in Georgetown.

These are the East Ruimveldt Secondary School and the St.Winefride’s Secondary School.

A new Grade Seven block will be constructed by Delph Construction at the East Ruimveldt Secondary School at a cost of $172 million. The building will accommodate 10 classrooms, an administrative block, a sanitary block and air conditioning units. This will see some 300 students being able to receive an education more comfortably.

Meanwhile, the construction works for a science lab and classroom at the St.Winefride’s Secondary School cost $85 million and will be carried out by Singh and Son Construction. The two-storey building will house four classrooms and a science lab.  Both projects are slated to be completed in five months.

During brief remarks, Minister Manickchand said the expansions are being carried out to address the long-standing spacing issues at schools across the country.

“One of the consequences of more children returning to schools was that we didn’t have enough space. The whole space issue was an issue facing the Ministry for the last couple of years and it wasn’t fixed, so it faced us squarely when we came back into schools for face-to-face education.”

She further highlighted that the expansion of the two schools is part of the Ministry’s plan to reconstruct and build schools across the country to achieve universal secondary education.

“Every child must be able to access a seat in a secondary school to complete their secondary education and even as we work on achieving universal secondary education that is giving every Guyanese child access to this, we want to make sure that the quality you get here is the same quality you will get a Queen’s College and The Bishops’ High and Anna Regina Secondary School all other schools across Guyana, the quality must be the same.”

The contracts for the projects were signed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Mr Alfred King.